Book ii

. of his chronicle. Four years of quiet were however too much for his mobile and energetic spirit; and in 1388, hearing that the Count Gaston de Foix, in the Pyrenees, was a man likely to know many details of the English wars in Gascony and Guyenne, he set out to visit him, taking among other presents a book of his poetry and two couples of hounds. When he still had ten days to travel he met a gentleman of Foix, with whom he journeyed the rest of the way, beguiling the time with talk about the sieges the various towns upon their route had suffered.

"At the words which he spoke I was delighted, for they pleased me much, and right well did I retain them all; and as soon as I had dismounted at the hostelries along the road which we traveled together, I wrote them down, at evening as in the morning, to have a better record of them in times to come; for there is nothing so retentive as writing."

Count Gaston received him hospitably, and filled his three months' sojourn with stories of great events. Then Froissart visited many towns of Provence and Languedoc. These peregrinations furnished much of the material for Book iii . Little more is known of his life, except with respect to a visit to England which he made in 1394, and which enabled him to collect material for a large part of