was required. At a time when invading armies and the far more terrible "free companies" pillaged the country, until the fair fields of France lay like a barren land, the Count de Foix suffered neither English nor French, Gascon nor Breton, to set foot within his territories, until assurance had been given that his people should suffer no harm. He lived splendidly, and gave away large sums of money wherever he had reason to believe that his interests or his prestige would be strengthened by such generosity; but no parasite, male or female, shared in his magnificent bounty. Clear-headed, cold-hearted, vigilant, astute, liberal, and inexorable, he guarded his own, and sovereigns did him honor. His was no humane nor tranquil record; yet judging him by the standards of his own time and place, by the great good as well as by the lesser evil that he wrought, we are fain to echo Froissart's rapturous words, "It is a pity such a one should ever grow old and die."
The earlier part of the Chronicles is compiled from the "Vrayes Chroniques" of Jean le Bel, Canon of St. Lambert's at Liège. Froissart tells us so plainly, and admits that
