In the account of his visit to Orthez, Froissart sketches an unusually vivid picture of the Count of Foix and of his life style, a recollection in which are thrown together dramatic instances of Fébus' dangerous temper (the ‘stabbing’ of Pierre-Arnaud) and mundane details of his eating habits (his large consumption of chicken wings), as well as the number of torches lighting the Count's supper table, the amount of his daily alms distributed at his door, and his appreciation of minstrelsy. From other sources – such as the inventory of his library – it can be inferred that Fébus was an omnivorous reader: he is known to have possessed French paraphrases of works by Ovid, Pliny, Livy, and Valerius Maximus. There is reason to believe that one of the ‘textbooks’ procured for his education was the Elucidari de las proprietats de totas res naturals, a richly illustrated Béarnais version of that most famous of medieval encyclopedias, the De proprietatibus rerum (‘On the nature of things’) of Bartholomeus Anglicus. Other encyclopedic works in the Château Moncade library included the Livre des merveilles of Marco Polo and the Speculum major of Vincent de Beauvais, which encompassed not only natural history, but also universal history, psychology, poetics, laws, and diverse crafts and occupaions. Fébus himself commissioned translations of Arabic treatises on medicine, mathematics and philosophy by the tenth-century Andalusian Abul Kasim and the Persian Ibn Sina (Avicenna). While some of his books must have been inherited, Gaston III was evidently keen to add to an already respectable collection.