The laxities of the last reign had permitted roving companies of what were little other than bandits to fight and burn and slay all over France, while in the northern provinces a lively war was going on with the Navarrese, helped by the Gascons and by bands of English. The territorial loss due to the Peace of Brétigny was a sore memory to king and people, and this participation in the internal strife of the country by the chief enemies of France aggravated hatred of the English. Nor was England the only land troublesome to Charles. There were dissensions in Italy and Spain and the French of the south were drawn into affairs that touched them practically although they were over the border. Avignon, which had been the enforced home of the popes since Philip the Fair’s refusal to acknowledge the temporal power of the pontiff over sixty years before, was deserted by Pope Urban V, who went to Rome in spite of Charles’s protestations. The emperor of Germany, Charles IV, was the only monarch of Europe who seemed to have any kindly feeling toward the young king. His friendship continued throughout Charles’s reign, and in 1378, two years before its end he and his son paid a visit to Paris. Charles showed his appreciation of the imperial good will by the cordiality and elaborateness of his reception. The king’s representative, the Provost of Paris, and the people’s representative, the Provost of the Merchants, went as far as Saint Denis to meet the German train. The king himself, dressed in scarlet and mounted on a handsome white horse, awaited them at the suburb of La Chapelle. The combined retinues made a dazzling procession across the city to the palace on the island, where, in the evening, a supper was served to over eight hundred princes and nobles. The effect was disastrous on the emperor for he was so laid up with gout on the following day that he had to be borne by servants even the short distance between his apartments and the Sainte Chapelle where he heard mass and saw the Most Holy Relics. On that same day the burghers expressed their satisfaction with the visit by presenting their imperial guest, by the hand of the Provost of the Merchants, with a superb piece of silver and two huge silver-gilt flagons. Every day of the succeeding week was filled with festivities. In the city the emperor visited the Louvre and the Hôtel Saint Paul--the new palace at the east end--where he was received by the queen who showed him the royal menagerie. He made various excursions in the suburbs--to Saint Denis to see the tombs of the French monarchs, to the abbey of Saint Maur, east of the city, to the _château_ of Vincennes, where Charles was born and where he was destined to die two years later, and where now the imperial gout prevented the elder guest joining the younger in a stag hunt, and finally, on the day of departure, to the king’s favorite _château_--de Beauté. Here the monarchs parted after exchanging rings and expressions of esteem.