In 1380, died the wise though unlovely Charles V., leaving the kingdom temporarily free from the English and in just that nice state of balance between recuperation and ruin when a little thing would suffice to turn the scale either way. His son and heir was a boy of twelve, already madly fond of pleasure, already filling his weak head with fantastic tales of chivalry and romantic devotion to such sturdy warriors as Du Guesclin, whom he could never hope to rival. His reign begins in a dream--a dream of his meeting a fantastic flying hart, which he took for his emblem. The dream goes on, in mad festivities encouraged by Philippe le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, who had chief charge of the boy. This Philippe--that same brave son of King John whom we see at Poitiers fighting by his father's side--was a great man, though not lovable; he was too acute a politician to be altogether admirable. In one of the grand shows arranged for the boy king on the occasion of the double marriage of the son and the daughter of Philippe de Bourgogne to the daughter and the son of Duke Alberic of Bavaria, the Duchess of Brabant, whom Froissart calls a woman "full of good counsel," suggested to the king's uncles that it would be well to find a wife for the young king in the same powerful family now allied to the house of Burgundy. Nothing could have better suited the plans of Philippe de Bourgogne, who accordingly sent portrait painters to reproduce the charms of the respective candidates for the hand of the king, and from the portraits selected Isabeau de Bavière, daughter of Etienne II. and a princess of the great Italian family of Visconti.