He determined upon a visit to the centre and the south of France.

Such a trip was to himself, and to the princes and cities that entertained him, a cause of enormous expense.

"When the king stopped anywhere, there were wanted for his own table, and for the maintenance of his following, six oxen, eighty sheep, thirty calves, seven hundred chickens, two hundred pigeons, and many other things besides.

The expenses for the king were set down at two hundred and thirty livres a day, without counting the presents which the large towns felt bound to make him." But Charles was himself magnificent even to prodigality, and he delighted in the magnificence of which he was the object, without troubling himself about their cost to himself.

Between 1389 and 1390, for about six months, he travelled through Burgundy, the banks of the Rhone, Languedoc, and the small principalities bordering on the Pyrenees.
Everywhere his progress was stopped for the purpose of presenting to him petitions or expressing wishes before him.