It was early summer when Isabeau took leave of her father and her country, and set off with her uncle upon her journey. They travelled first to Brussels, where they were warmly received by the Duchesse de Brabant with whom they stayed three days, and then went to Quesnoy to stay three weeks with the Duchesse de Hainault; of whom Froissart remarks, “_La duchesse qui fut moult sage, endoctrinait tous les jours, en toutes manières et contenances, la jeune fille de Bavière, quoique, de sa nature, celle-ci estoit propre et pourvue de sens et de doctrine; mais point de françois elle ne sçavoit_.”
They also made considerable changes in Isabeau’s dress, which they declared to be far too simple for the future Queen of France. The Duchesse de Brabant ordered an entirely new trousseau for her so that she might be dressed as magnificently as if she had been her own daughter, and having arranged all this she went to Amiens, where she was joined by Isabeau under the care of the Duchesse de Hainault and her uncle, Friederich of Landshut.
The fair of Amiens, which took place every year was one of those mixtures of amusement and devotion so characteristic of the Middle Ages. The relic, which they declared to be the head of St. John the Baptist, had been brought from the siege of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204; and given by a gentleman of Picardy to the church of St. Jean d’Amiens, of which one of his brothers was a canon. It was always shown at the time of the fair, to which all classes came in crowds. One can form no idea of the splendour and picturesqueness of these mediæval fairs from the squalid spectacles that survive in our own days.