The young Isabeau, whose portrait showed her to be the most beautiful of the princesses to be chosen from, was brought into Brabant by her uncle, under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint John of Amiens, while the Duke of Burgundy at the same time found an excuse for conducting Charles to Amiens, without giving him the slightest hint of the purpose of the journey. Isabeau was presented to the king by the Duchesses of Brabant and Bourgogne, and kneeled low before him, lifting up her sweet girlish face to him in lieu of speaking in a tongue as yet unknown to her. Then Charles took her by the hand, raised her and looked at her pensively; "and in this look the sweet thought of love did enter into his heart." After the ladies had withdrawn from the royal presence, the Sire de la Rivière, an old minister of Charles V., asked the king: "Sire, what think you of this young lady? shall she remain with us?" "By my faith, yes," replied Charles, "we wish no other, for she pleases us." There was no tarrying for elaborate ceremonies, fond as the king was of them; Charles insisted on an immediate wedding. He and the young German princess were married on July 17, 1385, four days after this first interview. The bride was but fourteen, and the groom not quite seventeen; it was one of those infamous child marriages of which the history of Europe is too full. Isabeau de Bavière was already of a slothful habit, to be roused only by her love of amusement, to purchase which neither she nor her young husband would spare anything. Luxury and wild extravagance in dress, in entertainments, even in funerals, was characteristic of the age; the whole kingdom gave itself up to extravagance and debauchery; existence was one mad revel, with no thought of who should pay the piper; all must dance and caper as if bitten by the tarantula. The very costumes are wild: "Here (we see) men-women comically tricked out, and effeminately trailing on the ground robes twelve ells long; there, others, whose figures are distinctly defined by their short Bohemian jackets and tight pantaloons, though with sleeves floating down to the ground; here, men-beasts, embroidered all over with animals of every kind; there, men-music, pricked all over with notes, from which one could sing before or behind; while others placarded themselves with a scrawl of signs and letters, which, no doubt, said nothing good.... Rational beings did not hesitate to disguise themselves in the satanic, bestial shapes which grin down upon us from the eaves of churches. Women wore horns on their heads, men on their feet the peaks of their shoes were twisted up into horns, griffins, serpents' tails. The women, above all, would have made our spirits (of the age of Saint Louis) tremble; with their bosoms exposed, they haughtily paraded high above the heads of the men their gigantic hennin (the peaked and horned headdress) with its scaffolding of horns, requiring them to turn sideways and stoop as often as they