Alas! her enthusiasm found faint response in Charles. A skit of the time denounced him thus: “_Nouvelle du Roy nullement; ne que se il fust à Romme oue Jherusalemme!_”--“The King is of no use whatever; he might as well be at Rome or at Jerusalem!” Still, the Queen did not fail for loyal soldiers nor for consummate captains; first and foremost was her beloved brother René, now King of Sicily-Anjou.
But now enemies more terrible than the hated English, more insidious than the squabbling Princes, stalked the broad plains of suffering France--the three fell sisters, famine, flood, and fever. The price of foodstuffs rose portentously; wheat, butter, oil, and cheese, were a hundred times dearer than their usual cost. Men grovelled like pigs for offal, and women and children laid themselves down to die just where they were. Queen Marie’s tender heart grieved sorely for her people’s misery. She sold what jewellery she had left, and pawned her available property to minister to the prevailing want. And then a new terror seized the land--the rivers were in flood, and what stocks and crops the famine had left were washed away, and beggary stared the nation in the face. The Queen instituted pilgrimages of women to celebrated shrines, and she herself put on the deepest mourning and spent her time in prayer. All seemed to be of no avail to stay the afflicting hand of Heaven, for no sooner were the waters abated than the scourge of fever was let loose on the devoted land of France, and corpses were flung out of echoing doorways and left for chance burial, or to be the prey of scavaging dogs. Had the Day of Judgment dawned? men asked each other, whilst they promptly covered their mouths against the infection. Delirium would have seized all the remnants of the population had not the intrepid Queen ridden up and down, risking her own precious life and appealing to one and all to be courageous, bear all, and hope for better days.
Marie had happy days and proud to cancel days of gloom and penury. Toulouse was _en fête_; it was the month of May, 1435, best loved of all the children of Mary; and she made a stately entry into that ancient, loyal city with the King by her side. Oddly enough, she was mounted on pillion behind her young son, the Dauphin Louis, then a lad of twelve. Her vesture was superb--a blue brocaded satin robe, bordered heavily with royal ermine. She was _décolletée_, her bosom covered with jewels and chains of gold. Upon her head, rising out of a regal diadem of flashing gems, she wore a _chaperon_, a hood of fine white cambric shaped like a crescent, raised at the points, and lightly covered with a thin white gauze veil. Her hair was bunched over her ears, and carried in a golden jewelled net. Her feet were shod in white, gold-embroidered kid, and she wore, after her mother’s fashion, jewelled white kid gloves. Four Chamberlains, also mounted, held a state canopy of cloth of gold and white plumes over their royal mistress and her white charger.