perpetual journey.

He would set out at break of day with five or six intimates dressed in
grey cloth like pilgrims; archers and baggage followed at a distance.
He would forbid any one to follow him, and often ordered the gates of
the city he had left to be closed, or a bridge to be broken behind
him. Ambassadors ordered to see him without fail, sometimes had to
cross France to obtain an interview, at least if their object was
something in which he was not much interested. Then he would often
grant them an audience in some miserable little peasant hut.

In the cities where he stopped he would lodge with a burgomaster or
some functionary. To avoid harangues and receptions he would often
arrive unannounced through a little alley. If forced to accept an
_entrée_ he stipulated that it should not be marked with magnificence.
There never was a prince who so disliked ceremonies, balls, banquets,
and tourneys. At his court young people were bored to death. He never
ordered festivals except for some visitor; his pleasures were those
of a simple private gentleman. He liked to dine out of his palace.
Cagnola relates with surprise that he had seen the king dine after
mass in a tavern on the market-place at Tours. He invited small nobles
and bourgeois to dine with him. He was intimate, too, with bourgeois
women, and indulged in gross pleasantries, speaking to and of women
without reserve, sparing neither sister, mother, nor queen.

Yet it was a sombre court. "Farewell dames, citizens, demoiselles,
feasts, dances, jousts, and tournaments; farewell fair and gracious
maids, mundane pleasures, joys, and games," says Martial d'Auvergne.
Pompous magnificence may have reminded Louis unpleasantly of his visit
to Burgundy.