Also of enormous quantities of sweetmeats and bonbons made “for the Queen and _enfants de France_ (at the New Year); that is to say, for _nos seigneurs_ the Dukes of Guyenne and Touraine, and _nos dames_ the Duchesse de Bretagne et Michelle de France.” Dragées, coriander, _paste du roy_, preparations of cinnamon, rose sugar, sugared nuts (perhaps pralines), and various others in great quantities and several times; sometimes twenty pounds, sometimes forty, and then, as one can well imagine, medicines for the Dukes of Guyenne and Touraine.
Also frequently paper and bottles of ink for the Queen, and money paid to the messengers who carried her letters on many occasions to the King, the Duc and Duchesse d’Orléans, to various abbots, abbesses, and different people.[197]
She also had some fools and dwarfs. One called _Grand Jehan le fol_ died some time before, and there is a bill for 12 lbs. of wax for his funeral at St. Germain d’Auxerrois. These fools were both male and female; she had one fool, her mother, and grandmother, besides a Saracen woman some one had given her, of whom she afterwards made a sister (_sœur converse_) in a convent.
In August the young Queen of England came home. Henry IV. had behaved very badly to her and to her family, for it was not until after long and tedious negotiations that he would send her at all, and when he did he kept nearly all her jewels and the whole of her dowry. He went to take leave of and console her and sent her to Calais with a brilliant escort of nobles and ladies. Her father was just then in his right senses, and delighted at her coming. He sent his uncle the Duke of Burgundy to fetch her. The Duke met her halfway between Calais and Boulogne, where a magnificent tent was pitched in which she took wine and refreshments with her English ladies, who sobbed and cried as she embraced them all, gave them presents, and took leave of them. She then joined the Duke of Burgundy, who waited for her with an escort of six hundred cavalry, and journeyed by Boulogne, Abbeville, then to Picardy, and by St. Denis to Paris, where she was restored to her parents, brothers, and sisters at the hôtel St. Paul. Charles and Isabeau received her with joy and affection. The Queen took charge of her and re-arranged her household, which she diminished in numbers but placed ladies of higher rank about her.[198]