Among the executions was that of Jean Desmarets, an old man who had served well and faithfully both king and people. His had been a soothing influence on many occasions when the citizens would have broken out in rebellion, but now he was caught in a position where his conviction was inevitable in the midst of a turmoil where discriminations were not made. On his way to execution some one shouted to him to ask King Charles for mercy. “God alone will I ask for mercy,” he said. “I served well and faithfully King Charles’s great-grandfather, and his grandfather, and his father, and they had nothing with which to reproach me. If the king had the age and knowledge of a man he would never have been guilty of such a judgment against me.” When the Parisians piled up before the Louvre enough arms to furnish forth eight hundred thousand soldiers Charles knew that they were thoroughly penitent. The king’s uncles soon wearied of guardianship which each must share with his brother, and they went off on their separate interests with the exception of the strongest of them all, the duke of Burgundy. He was that same Philip the Bold who had fought beside his father at Poitiers and who had received the duchy of Burgundy as his reward. He had made an advantageous marriage, and so firmly established was he and so conscious of his power that at the coronation of Charles VI he had sat down beside the king in the place which his brother Anjou should have occupied, and no one tried to dispossess him. Now he practically ruled the kingdom alone, though the other uncles returned now and then. Charles was but a lad still, and it was not unnatural that he should be lively, and his uncles were well content that he should be diverted from any attempt to learn anything of his business of government. Balls and jousts were frequent. There was a revival of the fashions of the days of chivalry, and old chronicles and tales were sought out to teach the ancient customs. The ladies wore extravagant head-dresses with veils and horns and the men decked themselves in tight nether garments and flowing sleeves. Froissart tells in detail the events of the “First Entry” of Charles’s queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, into Paris. He is not right in saying that she never had been in the city. She had been married five years at the time: her wedding banquet had been given in the palace of the Cité, and she had been crowned in the Sainte Chapelle. This “Entry” was merely an excuse for especially gorgeous festivities.