Their dear king Charles, even, so beloved of a mad people, was not less mad than they. Save for occasional lucid intervals, he was a "fou furieux."
"It was great pity, this malady of the king, which held him for long seasons, and when he ate it was very gluttonously and wolfishly. And he could not be persuaded to strip himself, and was full of lice, vermin, and filth. And he had a little piece of iron that he put secretly close to his flesh. Of which nothing was known. And it had rotted all his poor flesh, and no-one durst go near him to remedy it.
"Nevertheless there was a physician who said that it must be remedied, else was he in danger, and otherwise as it seemed to him, there was no hope for the healing of the malady. And he advised that they should bring ten or twelve companions disguised, who should be blackened, and each one furnished beneath, lest he should wound them. And so it was done and the companions entered very terrible to see, into his chamber. When he saw them he was much astonished, and they drew nigh to him at once: now there had been made ready all new clothing, shirt, tunic, cloak, hose, boots, that they bore with them. They took hold of him, he saying many words to them the while, then they stripped him and put upon him the said things that they had brought. It was great pity to see him, for his body was all eaten with lice and filth. And they found on him the said piece of iron: every time that they would cleanse him, it must needs be done in this said manner."[151]
Such was the France of the closing years of Philippe le Hardi's rule—King and country lifting clasped hands, to say, with old Lear: "Not mad, sweet Heaven, not mad!"
The condition of Burgundy, and especially of its great appanage Flanders, which Duke Philip had inherited from his wife, though bad, was not so serious as that of the country in general.
In Dijon there was comparative security—enough for the establishment, under Philippe le Hardi, of a new era in Burgundian art. For Philip had great ideas. He never forgot that he was brother to Charles V. of France. Dijon, if not to rival Paris, should be at least a capital worthy of its Valois Duke. This jouisseur raffiné must have architects, sculptors, and painters; cunning embroiderers, too, and workers in ivory. But above all, he must have goldsmiths. They came flocking in from all Flanders. "On s'harnachoit d'orfavrerie" says Martial d'Auvergne.[150] We have already seen the bear upon Philip's coat.
He began, in 1366, with the tower of a new castle—now the Tour de Bar—to replace the ruined château of the Capetian Dukes; and followed it, twelve years later, with a monastery, the Chartreuse de Champnol, at the gates of Dijon, where he wished to house suitably his monks and his tomb.
The Chartreuse de Champnol remained the burial place of the Ducal house until the 16th century; but it has not survived to our day. Its close connection with royal authority marked it out for the attentions of the revolutionary mob. The site is now occupied by an "Asile des Aliénées" as the French politely term a mad-house—a choice in which the cynic may detect either a retort upon rampant democracy, or a sly allusion to certain congenital failings of the House of Valois. There is little to be seen in the Asile des Aliénées; but that little is so important that we decided to go there. For, in the centre of the old cloister, was, and is, Claus Sluter's world-famous sculpture—Le Puits des Prophètes.