initial commit of ebook 32695HEADmain

1 files changed, 13047 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/32695.txt b/32695.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9fbe19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32695.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13047 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of Mediaeval France, by Pierce Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Women of Mediaeval France
+       Woman: in all ages and in all countries Vol. 5 (of 10)
+
+Author: Pierce Butler
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2010 [EBook #32695]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Renald Levesque
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN
+
+VOLUME V
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE
+
+BY
+
+PIERCE BUTLER, PH. D.
+OF TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA
+
+
+
+[Illustration 1:
+ODETTE DE CHAMPDIVERS AND CHARLES VI.
+After the painting by Albrecht de Vriendt.
+The king, now often idiotic when he was not raving,... To amuse and
+distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the Duke
+of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and mistress. To
+the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now succeeded Odette.
+She was little more than a child, but she became mistress as well as
+playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (daughter of a horse
+dealer), she wears in court history a name better than that she was born
+to, Odette de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the
+mad king, called her "la petite reine" She was happy, it seems, and kind
+to the king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than
+was quite pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in
+later years when Burgundy and England were leagued together.]
+
+
+
+
+Woman
+
+In all ages and in all countries
+
+VOLUME V
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE
+
+BY
+
+PIERCE BUTLER, PH. D.
+Of Tulane University of Louisiana
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PUBLISHERS
+
+COPYRIGHT. 1907, BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS Entered at Stationers' Hall,
+London
+
+
+
+TO
+M. L. B. AND J. P. B.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+IT is the customary privilege of the author to meet you at the
+threshold, as it were, bid you welcome, and in his own person explain
+more fully and freely than he may elsewhere the plan and intent of his
+book. After you have crossed this imaginary boundary you may judge for
+yourself, weigh and consider, and condemn even with scant regard for the
+author's feelings; for as a guest it is your privilege. But here outside
+I am still speaking as one with authority and unabashed; for I know not,
+and will not let myself fancy, how the reader will censure me. Though
+the little that need be said may be said briefly, I trust the reader
+will be a reader gentle enough to permit me graciously this word of
+general comment upon the whole work.
+
+From the mediaeval _Ladies' Book_, of a kind that will be referred to in
+the following pages, to the very latest volume of _Social England_, or
+more aptly, perhaps, to the most local and frivolous _Woman's World_
+edited by an Eve in your daily paper, all the little repositories of
+ebbing gossip help immensely in the composition of a picture of the life
+of any period. They are not history; by the dignified historian of a few
+generations ago they were neglected if not scorned; but more and more
+are they coming to their own as material for history. In like manner the
+volume hardly claims to be a formal history, but rather ancillary to
+history. It has been the aim to present pictures from history, scenes
+from the lives of historic women, but above and through all to give as
+definite an idea as might be of the life of women at various periods in
+the history of mediaeval France.
+
+The keenness of your appetite for the repast spread will be the measure
+of the author's success. But whether I have been successful or not, the
+purpose was as has been said. Figures more or less familiar in history
+have been selected as the centrepieces; but scarcely anywhere have I
+felt myself bound to expound at length the political history of France:
+that was a business in which few women had a controlling voice, however
+lively their interest may have been, however pitifully or tragically
+their fate may have been influenced by battle or politics or mere
+masculine capricious passion.
+
+        "Theirs not to reason why;
+        Theirs but to do or die,"
+
+may be said of the soldier. Of these women of mediaeval France, as of
+all in the good days of old, it might be better said that it was not
+even theirs to do; the relief of action was not theirs; but to suffer
+and to die, without question. Yet the life was not all pain and
+suffering and sadness, as the scenes depicted will show. It is merely
+that the laughter has fallen fainter and fainter and died away--comedy
+perishes too often with the age that laughed at it--while the tears have
+left their stain.
+
+With this little hint to the reader I have done, and let the book tell
+him more if he please. To those who helped me in the writing of, nay,
+who made it possible to write this book, my gratitude is none the less
+strong that I do not write them down in the catalogue. Many a page will
+bring back vividly to them as well as to me the circumstances under
+which it was written. May these memories sweeten my thanks to them.
+
+PIERCE BUTLER.
+New Orleans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN THE DAYS OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS
+
+In the older conception, history was a record chiefly of battles, of
+intrigues, of wicked deeds; it was true that the evil that men did lived
+after them; at least, the even tenor of their ways was passed over
+without notice by the chroniclers, and only a salient point, a great
+battle or a great crime, attracted attention. If little but deeds of
+violence is recorded about men, still less notice does the average
+mediaeval chronicler condescend to bestow upon women. History has been
+unjust to women, and this is preeminently the case in the history of
+France at the period with which we are to begin in this chapter. The age
+of the good King Robert was an age of warfare; the basic principle of
+feudalism was military service; and what position could women occupy in
+a social system dependent upon force? The general attitude toward women
+is hinted at by the very fact that, in the great war epic of Roland, the
+love story, upon which a modern poet would have laid much stress, is
+entirely subordinated; it is the hero and his marvellous valor that the
+poet keeps before us. The heroine, if she can be so called, the sister
+of Roland's brother in arms, Oliver, is not once named by the hero. In
+the midst of the battle, when Roland proposes to sound his horn to
+summon Charlemagne to his aid, Oliver reproaches him:
+
+                    "Par ceste meie barbe!
+        Se puis vedeir ma gente soror Aide,
+        Vos ne gerrez jamais entre sa brace."
+
+(By my beard! if I live to see my sister, the beautiful Aude, you shall
+never be her husband!) After this she is mentioned no more until
+Charlemagne returns to Aix with the sad news of Roland's heroic death.
+Then comes to him _la belle Aude_ to ask where is her betrothed Roland.
+"Thou askest me for one who is dead," says Charlemagne; "but I will give
+thee a better man, my son and heir, Louis." "I understand thee not,"
+replies Aude. "God forbid that I should survive Roland!" She falls
+fainting at the emperor's feet, and when he lifts her up he finds her
+dead. Then he calls four countesses, who bear the body into a convent
+and inter it, with great pomp, near the altar. (II. 3705-3731.) _La
+belle Aude_ has fulfilled her mission when she dies for love of Roland.
+If she had been on the battlefield, she might have dressed Roland's
+wounds, since the role of physician and nurse was frequently played by
+women. Otherwise there is little use for women in an age of warfare, and
+so we shall find most of the good women passed over in silence, and only
+those of more masculine traits prominent in the earlier parts of our
+story.
+
+Before we can begin the story of those women whose names have come down
+to us from the France of the year 1000, it is necessary to have some
+sort of understanding of the social, if not of the political, condition
+of France, to learn what sort of influences environed and moulded the
+lives of women in those days. Such a survey of society, indeed, will be
+useful for the whole period of the Middle Ages, and will serve as a
+background for the figures of the women we shall have to consider,
+whether they be saints or sinners.
+
+At the beginning of the reign of the good King Robert, the France over
+which he ruled was still scarcely consolidated. The power of the kings
+of France hardly yet extended, in reality, over more than the little
+duchy of France, a territory bounded, roughly, by the cities of Orleans
+on the south, Sens on the east, Saint-Denis on the north, and Chartres
+on the west. Not only were the more powerful barons, counts, and dukes,
+among whom the land was parcelled out, subject to the kings only at
+their good pleasure, but the very people over whom they directly ruled
+were still dimly conscious of the fact that they sprang from different
+races. Even as late as the middle of the tenth century we hear of
+"Goths, Romans, and Salians" as more or less distinct. The fusion of the
+several races on the soil of France was, however, at that time probably
+complete in all but name, if we except the Celts in Brittany; even the
+latest arrivals in France, the Norsemen, had ceased to be mere wandering
+freebooters and were fast developing, like the rest of France, a caste
+of hereditary nobles whose title and power depended upon the tenure of
+land.
+
+We may roughly divide the society of the period into four classes. In
+the first we must place the nobles and their bands of retainers. In the
+second we find the churchmen, the greater among whom are hardly to be
+distinguished from the secular nobility, Below these, and a long
+distance below, come the inhabitants of the larger towns, the merchants
+and the better class of artisans. At the bottom, trodden down to the
+very soil from which they are forced to extract food for all the rest,
+and perhaps, if any is left, for themselves, come the peasantry.
+
+Since the disruption of the great conglomerate empire of Charlemagne,
+the power of the nominal kings of France had been gradually restricted.
+Powerless to protect the kingdom from the attacks of foreign enemies,
+the king was also powerless to preserve order within it. Personal
+immunity from force could be obtained only by the use of force; and if
+one were not strong enough to protect one's self, the only way was to
+purchase protection from a stronger neighbor. This was the reason for
+the growth of the complicated system of feudalism, with whose remote
+origins and exact details we are not here concerned.
+
+As regards the influence of the feudal system upon the position of
+women, it might be safe to say that feudalism at first made little
+change in their condition. They enjoyed neither more nor less rights
+than during the ages of barbaric _Sturm und Drang_; but certainly they
+found a little greater security against violence and oppression, since
+greater security was the general aim and the general effect of
+feudalism. The weak must always occupy a relatively better position in a
+compactly organized society than in a democracy of violence; and so the
+feudal system, retaining for women such small civil rights as they
+already possessed, added a greater personal security.
+
+This was not all. Though the transmission of property, on which all
+social standing was based, was regularly from male to male, and though
+female heirs might be passed over or disposed of by violence or
+chicanery, there were exceptions, which become more numerous as we go
+on. It cannot be said that there was at any time absolute prohibition of
+a daughter's inheriting from her father. In the Salic law, so called,
+there was a provision that "no part _of the salic land_ shall pass to a
+woman;" but all land was not salic, or allodial, and this provision was
+later held to apply particularly to the lands of the crown, and hence to
+the crown itself, as we shall see. Under the feudal system, the fief was
+held on condition of military service, and each vassal, as a rule, must
+_servir son fief_ (do the service of his fief) in person; but it was
+expressly stipulated that ecclesiastics, women, and children could
+perform this service by proxy, generally through a seneschal or baillie.
+
+Though warlike churchmen not infrequently led their vassals in person,
+witness the Bishop of Beauvais at the battle of Bouvines, "who shed no
+blood, though he brake many bones with his club," women appeared but
+rarely in the earlier time as Amazons, and then half in sport, as in the
+case of Queen Eleanor in the second Crusade.
+
+But, however they chose to perform their duty in the _host_ summoned by
+the sovereign's _ban general_, women were recognized as members of the
+feudal nobility. At the very top we find them, among the immediate great
+vassals of the crown, the _pairs de France_. We find, for example,
+Mathilde, or Mahault, Countess of Artois, sitting as a peer in the
+assembly which rendered judgment against the claims of her nephew,
+Robert, to the countship of Artois, in 1309; and the same countess
+receives a special summons to attend the court of peers in 1315; and in
+the next year, at the coronation of Philip V., she is among the peers
+who hold the crown over the king's head. This function was also
+performed by another Countess of Artois at the consecration of Charles
+V., in 1364.
+
+In less exalted stations, too, women held fiefs, and there may
+frequently have been personal reasons for the suzerain's preferring
+female vassals. For first by custom, and then by written law (see the
+_Assises de Jerusalem_ and the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_), the
+suzerain exercised a right of guardianship over his female vassals,
+maids or widows, as long as they were unmarried. In England very serious
+abuses followed from this right of wardship, as it was called, and the
+unfortunate French girls and children who were subjected to it were no
+better off than the English. We are not especially concerned here with
+the case of minor heirs under _garde-noble_, or ward, except where these
+heirs were girls. The girl so situated must not marry without the
+consent of the lord who held the _garde-noble_ of her person and of her
+domain. If she did so she was liable to fines and even to forfeiture of
+her fief; and this power was one which the feudal lords did not hesitate
+to exercise. We find Saint Louis objecting to the marriage of Jeanne,
+heiress of the county of Ponthieu, to the King of England, and to the
+marriage of the Countess of Flanders, widow of Count Ferrand, to Simon
+de Montfort, a vassal of the King of England. Both these instances show
+the reason which, in such a system as feudalism, underlay a power
+apparently so arbitrary; the suzerain, in mere self-defence, could not
+allow one of his fiefs to fall into the possession of a possible enemy.
+
+There was another right, a corollary to this one. The lord could compel
+his female ward to marry in order that the military duties of the fief
+might be performed by a man. Saint Louis compelled Matilda of Flanders
+to marry Thomas, Prince of Savoy. The famous _Assises de Jerusalem_,
+organizing one of the most compact bodies which feudalism developed, to
+defend the Holy Sepulchre in the midst of hostile infidels, contains
+express provisions on this subject. According to this code, the baron
+could say to his female vassal: "Dame, you owe service of marriage." He
+then designated three suitable candidates, and she had to choose from
+among them. The regulations of the so-called _Etablissements de Saint
+Louis_ on this subject are so interesting that we may give a paraphrase
+of a considerable portion of them. "When a lady becomes a widow, and is
+advanced in years, and has a daughter, the seigneur to whom she owes
+allegiance may come to her and say: 'Dame, I wish you to give me surety
+that you will not marry your daughter without my advice and consent, or
+without the advice and consent of her father's relatives; for she is the
+daughter of my liegeman, and therefore I do not wish her to be deprived
+of this advice.' Then it behooves the lady to give him due surety. And
+when the girl shall be of marriageable age, if the lady find anyone who
+asks her in marriage, she must come before the seigneur and the
+relatives of the girl's father and say to them: 'Sire, my daughter is
+asked in marriage, and I will not give her without your consent, nor
+should I do so. Now give me your good and faithful counsel; for a
+certain man has asked for her' (and she must give his name). And if the
+seigneur say: 'I do not wish this man to have her, for so-and-so, who is
+richer and of better rank than the one you have named, has asked me for
+her, and will take her willingly' (and he shall name the man); or if the
+relatives on the father's side say: 'We know a richer and a better man
+than either of those you have named to us' (and they shall name him);
+then shall they deliberate and choose the best of the three and the one
+most advantageous to the demoiselle. And he who is chosen as the best
+should be really thought so, for no one should make a mockery of law.
+And if the lady marry her daughter without the consent of her seigneur
+and of the relatives on the father's side, after she had been forbidden
+to do so, she shall lose her movable goods," on which the seigneur is
+given the power of distraint. There is in this enactment elaborate
+provision for satisfying everybody but the person one would think most
+interested the young lady. Her consent to the arrangement was, to the
+mediaeval mind, a matter of small moment.
+
+The powers thus given to the seigneur by formal law were certainly
+exercised by right of custom, and probably with far less restraint of
+justice than that provided for in the _Etablissements_. For caprice,
+tyranny, or avarice might be satisfied by forcing an unfortunate ward
+into marriage. Frequently, the unscrupulous baron forced his ward to
+marry the highest bidder, or proposed some absolutely impossible
+candidate for her hand merely to have her buy her freedom. "You will
+either marry this decrepit old knight, to whose rank and wealth you
+cannot reasonably object, or you will pay me so much." We can well
+imagine that the impulse of youth would suggest surrender of almost any
+worldly wealth to have "freedom in her love." The romances are full of
+incidents akin to this, where the authority of either father or guardian
+was exerted in vain; and the romances, however fantastic in some
+respects, are but the reflections of actual conditions.
+
+The unmarried woman, whether princess or mere demoiselle, was in a
+condition almost as dependent as the serf. If she did not choose to
+marry, or if her face or her fortune could not tempt anyone to ask her
+in marriage, she might enter a monastery. Indeed, a father unwilling or
+unable to provide a suitable dower for her might force her to become a
+nun. The eldest son must be provided for first. If the patrimony were
+small and the family large, younger sons had to fend for themselves, and
+daughters had to take what they could get. The convent was the cheapest
+and the safest place in which to establish them.
+
+Yet in the age of feudalism there were certain safeguards for women,
+whether these were altogether of feudal origin or merely survivals of
+homely, common-sense custom. To cite but a few examples, we find in the
+_Assises de Jerusalem_ most stringent provisions for the punishment of
+seduction or crimes of violence against women. The statute provides that
+the seducer, if he be able to do so and is approved by the parents,
+shall marry the girl. In another connection, we learn that in Paris it
+was for a while customary to marry such a couple, whether they would or
+not, in the obscure little church of Sainte-Marine, and with a ring of
+straw as a symbol of their shame. In case marriage was not acceptable to
+the parents of the girl, the seducer might provide for her suitably in a
+convent, and he himself might be punished by mutilation, confiscation of
+his goods, and banishment. The husband had to secure to his wife a
+certain proportion of, if not all, her dowry, and in the book of the
+customs of Anjou we find it definitely stated that: _Il est usage que
+gentil home puit doer sa fame a porte de mostier dou tierz de sa terre_
+(It is the custom for a gentleman to endow his wife with the third of
+his goods at the church door). Then, to protect widows from oppressive
+feudal reliefs, as they were called, the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_
+ordain that "no lady shall pay a redemption fee (to secure succession to
+the fief), except in case she marry. But if she marry, her husband shall
+pay the fee to the seigneur whose vassal she is. And if what is offered
+does not please the seigneur, he can claim but the revenues of the fief
+for one year."
+
+Once admitted to the recognized class of the nobility, either as a wife
+or as one of the greater vassals, a woman's position was decidedly
+improved. Her rights were not many, but yet the feudal chatelaine
+occupied a position of some dignity and importance. She was regarded as
+in some sort the representative of her husband during his presence as
+well as during his absence. The _Assises de Jerusalem_ provide, among
+other things, that she shall not be proceeded against in court as the
+representative of her husband until a respite of a year and a day has
+elapsed, to allow for his possible return; and in the chateau, at all
+times the lady had charge of domestic affairs, and on state occasions
+shared the dignity of her husband.
+
+The feudal chateau of a great baron was not only a fortress to secure
+him against his enemies; it was also a home for his family and for
+scores of dependents and retainers, and frequently a hostelry for the
+entertainment of travellers of high and low degree. The moat, the
+drawbridge and portcullis, the strong walls pierced with narrow slits to
+admit scant light and air in time of peace and to deliver arrows in time
+of war, the battlements, and the lofty tower of strength, all these are
+familiar in our conceptions of the feudal castle. Many of us have
+followed Marmion in his mad dash under the descending portcullis and
+across the drawbridge of Lord Angus's castle; and we have watched the
+arrows flying against the walls of Front de Boeuf's donjon and old mad
+Ursula raving on its battlements. But the other features of the
+dwellings, though sometimes described with equal care by the great Sir
+Walter and his disciples, attract less attention and fade sooner from
+our memories. Such a manor hall as that of Cedric the Saxon should be
+kept in mind if we wish to get a fair idea of the actual life of the
+better classes, not only in England but in France, for the main features
+of the architecture and of the furnishings were the same. The nature and
+extent of the fortifications might vary greatly, according to the power
+or ambition of the owner; but the domestic arrangements of the feudal
+home would be substantially the same in all.
+
+The main portion of the house was given up to a huge hall. Entering the
+gateway of the outer wall, one found one's self in a court, around which
+were ranged the great hall, the smaller sleeping apartments, the
+domestic offices, and the stables. Every possible provision was made for
+men and animals to live within the enclosure in case of siege. The great
+hall itself was usually at least thirty or forty feet in length, and
+often so wide that its high, vaulted roof had to be supported on a row
+of columns extending down the middle. In the ceiling was a hole, or
+_louvre_, to allow the smoke to escape when fire was lighted on the
+hearth in the centre of the floor for chimneys were used as yet, if at
+all, only in the smaller rooms. At one end of the hall there was
+probably a slightly elevated dais, or platform, on which were the seats
+for the lord and lady, and perhaps for distinguished guests. In the tall
+ogival windows, which were glazed only in the houses of the very
+wealthy, were window seats, and along the rude board or table in the
+body of the hall were rough benches and stools for the retainers and
+guests of lesser rank. And if the lord were rich, there would be a
+gallery, at the opposite end from the dais, for the minstrels who played
+during banquets. Armorial bearings and weapons and armor hung upon the
+walls. If the roof were so broad as to require the support of pillars,
+these and the arches of the roof were decorated with carving. Sometimes
+a further effect of color might be added by tapestries upon the walls,
+and sometimes, though rarely, by mural paintings, as we are told in the
+lay of _Guingamor_:
+
+        "La chambre est paint tut entur;
+        Venus, la devesse d'amur,
+        Fu tres bein en la paintur."
+
+(The room is painted all about; Venus, the goddess of Love, was
+beautifully pictured in the painting.)
+
+The floor of the hall might be of wood, though at the early period of
+which we write it was very commonly of earth. There were no carpets,
+except in palaces of great luxury, even at a much later date; instead,
+the floor was covered with rushes or straw. Straw was anciently one of
+the symbols of investiture; in the Salic law the person conveying an
+estate cast a wisp of straw into the bosom of him to whom the property
+was to be conveyed. With this custom in mind, we can understand the
+anecdote told by Alberic des Troisfontaines of William the Conqueror.
+The floor of the room in which he was born was covered with straw. The
+newborn child, having been placed on the floor for a moment, seized in
+his tiny hands a bit of the straw, which he held vigorously. _"Parfoi!"_
+cried the midwife, _"cet enfant commence jeune a conquerir."_ Obviously,
+the anecdote, with its allusion to the Conquest, was made up long after
+the event, but it serves to show that even in the mansions of the well
+to do straw was the usual floor covering; and even much later we do not
+find the old coverings of rushes, branches, or straw displaced by
+carpets. In 1373 the inhabitants of a certain town (Aubervilliers) were
+exempted from a feudal tax on condition of their furnishing annually
+forty cartloads of straw to the hotel, or palace, of Charles V., twenty
+to that of the queen, and ten to that of the dauphin. On special
+occasions the ordinary straw might be displaced by fresh green boughs
+upon the floor and against the walls. Froissart tells us that on a very
+warm day "the count of Foix entered his chamber and found it all strewn
+with verdure and full of fresh new boughs; the walls all about were
+covered with green boughs to make the room more fresh and fragrant....
+When he felt himself in this fresh new chamber, he said: 'This greenery
+refreshes me greatly, for assuredly this has been a hot day.'" When the
+rushes or straw remained long on the floor without being renewed, as was
+assuredly often the case, trampled on by men and used as a couch by the
+dogs of the establishment, the effect must have been quite other than
+refreshing. This must have been the case in many a private house, but
+especially in such public places as the great churches and the great
+university of the Sorbonne, whose students sat on the floor upon straw,
+and had to pay twenty-five sous each to the chancellor for furnishing
+it.
+
+In the hall of the castle thus rudely furnished the inmates lived a
+large part of their lives. There the household assembled for meals.
+There the minstrel, if one chanced to be present, recited his romance.
+There the lord in person, or his seneschal or baillie, held his court to
+administer justice. It was the common room of the house, and usually
+contained all there was in the way of decoration. Comfort even here was
+hardly to be found; one can fancy that the fire on the open hearth gave
+out more smoke than heat, and the windows, often entirely unglazed and
+ill-fitting, let in more cold than light.
+
+The smaller apartments were even less pretentious in the way of comfort.
+Opening out of the hall, or arranged around the court, were little
+cubby-holes of places to serve as sleeping apartments. The furniture in
+them was of the simplest description, and one was not even sure of
+finding a bedstead; for unless the occupant were outrageously affected
+by what the old folks doubtless called the degenerate effeminacy of the
+age--in the year 1000--his bed was apt to be made on the floor, or in a
+bunk against the wall. Sometimes there was a larger apartment opening
+from the rear of the hall and destined for the private use of the lord
+and his lady. As luxury increased, this apartment gradually became
+better furnished, and at length there developed the lady's bower, where
+she might retire with her maids. Of these there would often be a goodly
+number, some mere domestics, some young girls of good family sent to
+learn polite manners and domestic arts under the lady of the castle. In
+the bower also tapestries would be hung on the walls, and, in place of
+arms, perhaps there would be the various musical instruments in popular
+use, particularly the harp, in various forms, known as _psalterions,
+cythares, decacordes_; the rote, which was what we should now call a
+viol; various forms of violins, such as the rebec and the lute; guitars;
+and perhaps flutes. The use of these instruments was, of course, not
+unknown to the ladies themselves, and we find many references in the
+romances to maidens at the courts playing upon the harp and singing,
+though the professional minstrel or the page in training was oftener the
+performer.
+
+In the bower, the lady was not occupied with mere amusements. We are apt
+to forget that our more complex civilization has taught us to rely upon
+others to do many things which even our great-grand-mothers had to do
+for themselves. Placed in the position of Robinson Crusoe, even with the
+help of the simple tools which Defoe allows him to have, how helpless
+would be the average man of to-day, simply because, from long dependence
+on the little conveniences of modern life,--from Lucifer matches and
+cooking stoves to ready-made clothing and ready-made houses,--he would
+have lost the use of the most elementary faculties. So the female
+Crusoe, in a feudal castle lone island, far from the conveniences of
+town and shops, must, if she expected to get any comfort for herself and
+those around her, know how to do innumerable small things that even the
+modern shopgirl finds done for her as a matter of course.
+
+She must know how to make bread, without question. In the romance of
+King Florus a faithful wife disguises herself as a page and accompanies
+her husband without his recognizing her. They fall upon evil days, and
+the wife-page earns a living for herself and her master by starting a
+bakery and eventually an inn. The lady of the manor must not only know
+how to make the greater part of the clothing that she wears, but must
+know how to weave the cloth of which her gown is made, and to spin the
+yarn from which cloth and thread alike must come, and to card the wool
+or prepare the flax before that. If soap be considered necessary,--and
+there seems to have been no excessive use of it,--it would be wise for
+her to know how to make it, since there might be no place near by where
+soap could be bought. Candles, too, of a rude sort, or some sort of
+rushlight, for domestic use, it would be well to know how to make; and,
+of course, she should know how to make cheeses and to cure meats for use
+during the long months when fresh meats might not be had. Even on the
+tables of the rich, salt meats were the staple article. Unable to
+provide for the feeding of large flocks through the winter--forage was
+scarce, root crops were little cultivated for stock, and the omnipotent
+potato had not yet come to its own,--the lord's steward would have a
+large number of animals slaughtered just at the beginning of winter, and
+the flesh of these had to be salted down. The good housewife would, of
+course, know something of the process. Though in large households the
+management of the male servants, the outdoor servants generally, fell to
+the steward or baillie, the lady even here undoubtedly had to give a
+general supervision, and had to provide work for and maintain discipline
+among the women of the household. It must have required no small amount
+of ability and tact, therefore, successfully to be the lady of the
+chateau.
+
+We need not pause here to consider the amusements and the traditional
+occupations of women, such as fine sewing and embroidery, or music and
+the care of flowers. These can best be noticed when we examine the
+romances of a later age.
+
+For women of the upper classes feudalism was not, we may say, entirely
+unjust or evil in its operations; but as feudalism meant oppression
+verging on slavery for Jacques Bonhomme, the peasant, his wife Jeanne
+could hardly have been in better case. With peasant marriages the
+seigneur could interfere even more tyrannically than with those of his
+feudal wards. In some places the bride and groom owed to the seigneur
+certain gifts called _mets de manage_. On the day of the wedding these
+"must be brought to the chateau by the bride, accompanied by musicians;
+the said mets shall consist of a leg of mutton, two fowls, two quarts of
+wine, four loaves of bread, four candles, and some salt, under pain of a
+fine of sixty sous." In some places that most infamous right known _par
+excellence_ as the _droit du seigneur_ was claimed, and we find a writer
+even as late as the seventeenth century recording the fact that the
+husband was sometimes required to purchase his bride's exemption from
+this right.
+
+At the early date of which we write, however, there is little or no
+information to be had about the peasantry; the monkish chroniclers
+mention them but rarely, and then unsympathetically. Popular literature,
+with its _lais, contes, fabliaux_, or rude dramas in which Jacques and
+Jeanne appear, did not yet exist. We may, however, guess from the
+barbarity with which they were treated how near to that of the brutes
+was their condition.
+
+About the year 997, soon after the death of the glorious Duke Robert the
+Fearless, the peasants of Normandy began to murmur against the wrongs
+they had to suffer. "The seigneurs," they said, "only do us harm; on
+account of them we have neither gain nor profit from our labor. Every
+day they take from us our work animals for feudal services. And then
+there are the laws, old and new, and pleas and lawsuits without end,
+about coinage, about forest rights, about roads, about milling our
+grain, about _hommage_. There are so many constables and bailiffs that
+we have not one hour of peace; every day they are pouncing down on us,
+seizing our goods, chasing us away from our land. There is no guarantee
+for us against the seigneurs and their men, and no contract holds good
+with them. Why do we allow ourselves to be treated thus, instead of
+trying to right our wrongs? Are we not men as they are? Courage is all
+we need. Let us therefore bind ourselves together by an oath, swearing
+to sustain each other. And if they make war upon us, have we not, for
+one knight, thirty or even forty young peasants, active, and fit to
+fight with clubs, with pikes, with bows and arrows, yea, with stones if
+there be no better weapons? Let us learn how to resist the knights, and
+we shall be free to cut the trees, to hunt, to fish at our own sweet
+will; and we will do as we please upon the water, in the fields, and in
+the forests." They held secret meetings, and finally formed some sort of
+an organization. But the seigneurs got wind of their designs. The young
+Duke Richard sent for his uncle, Raoul, Count of Evreux. "Sire," said
+Raoul, "do not you stir a foot, but leave it all to me." He collected a
+force of knights and men at arms, and, informed by a spy of the meeting
+place of the peasants, bore down upon them suddenly and arrested all the
+ringleaders. Then came the punishment, the like of which was not
+uncommon, though the victims were more numerous than usual. Some were
+empaled outright; some were cooked before a slow fire; some were
+sprinkled with molten lead. Others had their eyes torn out, their hands
+cut off, their legs scorched; and of these victims the few who survived
+were sent back among their fellows to inspire terror.
+
+One can well believe that these horrors and the ever present sight of
+those who had suffered from them kept the peasants in awe, as the old
+chroniclers exultantly tell us. The account as given in Wace's _Roman de
+Rou_ has in our eyes a pathos and a poetic grandeur far greater than the
+chronicler's enthusiastic record of the deeds of the great Norman dukes.
+With us the democratic spirit, or mere humanity, is so much stronger
+than with him that we read his lines with feelings of pity and
+indignation quite unforeseen by him. Is it not pitiful, this cry of the
+peasants?
+
+        "Nus sumes homes cum il sunt,
+        Tex membres avum cum il unt,
+        Et altresi grant cors avum,
+        Et altretant sofrir poum."
+
+(We are men even as they are, we have limbs and bodies like theirs, and
+can suffer as much.) One hears the echo of Shy lock's "Hath not a Jew
+eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
+passions?" The feudal ages would have answered Jew and peasant alike
+with an emphatic "No!"
+
+The barbarism in the suppression of this revolt is merely a typical
+instance of the prevailing cruelty of manners. It was not the peasant
+alone, regarded as hardly the same flesh and blood, to whom the seigneur
+was cruel. Let us look at a few of these famous knights, and first at
+the deeds of one notoriously wicked even in his own day. This was
+Foulques, surnamed Nerra, the black, Count of Anjou, and ancestor of the
+Plantagenet line. This same Foulques was twice married. His first wife,
+Elizabeth, accused of adultery--probably because he wished to get rid of
+her,--he disposed of by violent methods. One account reports that he had
+her burned alive; another, that he had her thrown over a precipice; and
+as she survived this, he, scandalized by her refusal to die in this more
+picturesque fashion, stabbed her himself. One is reminded of Nero, that
+most cheerful of the Roman murderer-emperors, who contrived an elaborate
+machine to drown his mother, and, when she swam ashore, was so irritated
+by the failure of his scheme that he had her summarily decapitated.
+Foulques's second wife was so ill used that she fled to the Holy Land.
+The pious count once burned down the church of Saint-Florent at Saumur,
+calling out to the saint: "Let me burn your old church here, and I'll
+build you a far finer one in Angers." And later he did build a huge
+abbey, which no one of the neighboring bishops would consecrate; but a
+judicious application to Rome, backed by a present, brought a cardinal
+to consecrate it; and the wrath of Heaven was shown, says the
+chronicler, for the new church was destroyed by lightning. At length the
+devout Foulques, who had made two previous pilgrimages to the Holy Land,
+was so smitten by remorse that he undertook a third. When he arrived at
+Jerusalem he had himself tied to a hurdle and dragged through the
+streets, while two of his servants flogged him, and he cried out at
+every blow: "Have mercy, O Lord, on the perjured traitor, Foulques!" We
+are not told--but it is probable--that the servants who did the flogging
+either did not survive very long, or else were wise enough to flog very
+gently. Foulques, however, died on his way back from Jerusalem.
+
+Then there is the story of the chatelaine of the magnificent castle of
+Ivri, Alberede, or Aubree, wife of Raoul, Count of Evreux, half-brother
+of Richard I. She employed Lanfred, the most accomplished architect of
+the time, who had built the strong castle of Ponthiviers (about 1090),
+to build the castle of Ivri, stronger and more cunningly devised than
+any other. When he had finished, in order that he might build no better
+castle, or might not reveal the secrets of the fortifications of Ivri,
+she had his head cut off. But Count Raoul was a prudent man, and took
+the hint. He had Alberede executed too.
+
+One Norman gentleman, Ascelin de Goel, having had the good luck to
+capture his feudal lord, held him for ransom; and in order that he might
+be encouraged to pay more, had him exposed at an open north window, in
+his shirt, and poured cold water over him, that the winter winds might
+freeze it. And even the mild and saintly King Robert, in his war against
+the Duke of Burgundy, laid waste the country far and wide, massacred
+defenceless peasants, and did not spare even monasteries and churches,
+since peasants and monasteries alike were regarded as but the goods of
+the duke, which it was his right to destroy.
+
+The Church had some redress for the evils suffered. The pious and
+superstitious king was tormented nearly all his life by the threats of
+eternal damnation which the Church held over him. This brings us to a
+consideration of the influence of the Church upon manners in general and
+upon the condition of women.
+
+Though there were many ambitious, greedy, and cruel priests; though many
+of them lived in open defiance of the Church's prohibition of marriage
+among the clergy,--there were several married bishops at an earlier
+period, and one of these, the Bishop of Dole, actually plundered his
+church to dower his daughters,--the Church as a whole unquestionably
+stood for the best in manners and in morals. After Charlemagne's vain
+attempts to revive popular education, what learning there was existed
+only among the clergy. Though themselves forming part of the feudal
+nobility and holding fiefs for which they owed military service, the
+bishops, abbots, and priors almost always espoused the cause of the weak
+and the oppressed. Within the precincts of the church the poor fugitive
+from violence done in the name of justice was offered sanctuary, and the
+right of sanctuary was usually respected.
+
+Within the walls of the monastery women were offered safety. There were
+many, of course, who might choose the quiet and the comparative ease of
+the cloister life from motives little better than worldly, and others
+who might enter with sentiments of romantic devoutness which it is hard
+for most of us to appreciate in this day; and both were doubtless
+satisfied with what they found in the convent. But there were many
+others who had been forced into a life absolutely distasteful to them
+and alien to their temperaments. How many of these withered away in
+discontent! how many revolted more actively and led lives that brought
+reproach and disgrace upon the Church! Among the earliest of the satires
+against social abuses we find those against hypocritical, avaricious,
+gluttonous, or licentious monks and nuns; and the stream of satire runs
+throughout the Middle Ages. Monks live in the _pays de Cocagne_, to gain
+admittance to which one had to wallow seven years in filth; monks and
+nuns are in Rabelais's _Abbe de Theleme_, and _en leur reigle n'estoit
+que ceste clause: fais ce que vouldra_; and monks and nuns again play
+anything but edifying roles in the _fabliaux_ and their successors, the
+short tales such as one finds in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_.
+
+Monasteries for women abounded all over France, most of them under some
+form of the Benedictine rule. Within their own monasteries women could
+govern themselves, though the whole convent was usually dependent upon
+male ecclesiastical control, either attached to a neighboring monastery,
+or under the jurisdiction of a bishop. In the great double monastic
+community of Fontevrault, established about noo by Robert d'Arbrissel,
+women were exalted above men; the nuns sang and prayed, the monks
+worked, and the entire establishment was under the guidance of the
+abbess.
+
+The abbess or prioress occupied a position of responsibility and dignity
+not unlike that of the chatelaine. She too had the control of a large
+domestic establishment, and she was responsible not only for religious
+discipline but for the temporal provision for her nuns. The abbess had
+the power of a bishop within the limits of her convent, and bore a
+crosier as the sign of her rank. She might even hold some feudal tenure
+in the name of her convent. She drew revenues from her holdings and was
+in every sense the executive head of her house. At first--always under
+some of the stricter rules--the abbess carried on business outside the
+convent through some male agent. Greater freedom undoubtedly prevailed
+at times, however, and the rule against her leaving the convent was
+ignored. She was in some cases appointed, but usually elected from among
+the nuns, though cases are found, of course, where the abbess was the
+mere creature of some powerful lay or ecclesiastical authority. To
+become abbess of a nunnery was not considered beneath even a princess of
+the blood; and in some convents probably the same caste distinctions
+were observed as prevailed outside, and the nuns were nothing more than
+elegant retired ladies of birth and fashion.
+
+The abbess appointed her subordinates, who varied in number and rank
+according to the power of the convent. There was generally a
+sub-prioress, second in authority to the abbess, and certain minor
+executive officers, whose duties were nevertheless important, such as
+the chaplain, the sexton, and the cellaress. The chaplain was in most
+cases a monk chosen to celebrate Mass for the nuns, since women were not
+allowed to become actual priests; but in some cases the officer called
+the chaplain was a nun, whether or not she could officiate in all
+capacities. The sexton was a nun whose duties were to ring the bells for
+services, to keep in order the chapel, the altar, and the sacred
+vessels, and sometimes to act as a treasurer. The most interesting of
+these officers, however, and the one whose position must have been
+really most trying, was the cellaress. It was she who had general
+supervision of the commissariat. She was usually chosen upon the advice,
+if not by the election, of the whole community, and it was especially
+important that she should be a tactful person and a judicious manager.
+As housekeeper of the establishment, she had to control the servants and
+to satisfy the nuns. In providing food and drink for the household, she
+had to manage receipts and disbursements of considerable amounts. Very
+frequently a farm was attached to the nunnery, or there were several
+farms whose produce was to be used for the support of the institution.
+For whatever was bought or sold the cellaress had to make an accounting.
+With the proceeds of her sales or of the rent of the farms under her
+control, or with the money allowed her, she had to buy such provisions
+as were needed: grain, flesh, fish,--usually a very large item,
+especially in the Lenten season,--condiments, such as preserved fruits,
+spices, salt, etc., and, where the rule did not utterly forbid it, wine
+or ale. Of these details we shall speak more fully in connection with
+the rules for a model nunnery which Abelard wrote for Heloise and upon
+which she based her government of the famous monastery of the Paraclete.
+
+[Illustration 2:
+DROIT DU SEIGNEUR.
+After the painting by Lucien Melingue.
+As feudalism meant oppression verging on slavery for Jacques Bonhomme,
+the peasant, his wife Jeanne could hardly have been in better case. With
+peasant marriages the seigneur could interfere even more tyrannically
+than with those of his feudal wards. In some places the bride and groom
+owed to the seigneur certain gifts called _mets de mariage...._ and that
+most infamous right known as the _droit du seigneur_ was claimed, and we
+find a writer even as late as the seventeenth century recording the fact
+that the husband was sometimes required to purchase his bride's
+exemption from this right.]
+
+Aside from the protection they afforded to women who might otherwise
+have been utterly lost in the rough world, the monasteries were of great
+importance in other ways. Whatever it may have become during the period
+of the decline of monastic purity, the life in the nunneries, even in
+the comparatively dark period about the year 1000, was not an idle one.
+The day was carefully portioned off into periods of work, of religious
+devotion, and of leisure, which long custom fixed into a routine. The
+occupations included what we should now class chiefly as artistic work,
+though much of it was at the time really useful in a more homely
+way,--weaving of hangings and tapestries for the church, embroidery,
+painting and illuminating, and copying of manuscripts. This last was, of
+course, work of the highest utility, though the artistic skill displayed
+in the writing itself and in the beautiful illuminations made it also an
+art. We have few names of actual scribes of either sex, since they
+rarely signed the manuscripts they copied; but among these few there are
+some of women. The magnificent tapestries, sometimes large enough to
+cover in one piece the side of a church, are perhaps the most noteworthy
+of the products of the monasteries. So famous was the work of the nuns
+in this particular that tradition assigned to them, though perhaps
+mistakenly, the production of one of the most famous historical
+authorities for the Norman Conquest, the Bayeux tapestries, said to have
+been wrought for Bishop Odo of Bayeux by nuns under the direction of
+Queen Matilda.
+
+Most important of all in the activities of the convent was education. At
+the time of which we write, the standard of learning in the convents was
+higher than one would think, and higher than it was some centuries
+later; for Latin was still used familiarly among some of the women
+educated in convents. The most famous instance of learning is that of
+the Saxon nun Hrotsvith, or Roswitha, of the tenth century, who wrote
+legends of the saints, dramas on the model of the comedies of Terence,
+and chronicles. There were other learned nuns, though none famous in the
+French literature of the time, all of whom gained their knowledge in
+convents; for it was in convents alone that women could ordinarily
+receive any education at all. One of the main purposes of the convent
+was to train young girls. Sometimes there was only such training as
+would fit them to became novices and eventually nuns, and the degree of
+education was of course determined in part by social standing; that is,
+a princess would be more carefully trained than a mere demoiselle; but
+some convents became famous schools, where education was given for its
+own sake, not merely to train those who meant to become nuns. In many
+cases, children of both sexes were taught, and girls and boys together
+learned Latin. In the romance of _Flore et Blancheflore_, the hero
+recalls how he and Blancheflore loved when they were children at school,
+"and told each other of our love in Latin, and none understood us." But
+the girls were probably better educated, in our sense of the word, than
+the boys; for teaching a boy to avoid breaking Priscian's head was then
+less necessary than teaching him to break that of his opponent in
+battle.
+
+Leaving the convents out of the question, the Church helped the cause of
+woman and of humanity by its constant endeavor to repress violence.
+About the year 1030 France was afflicted by a succession of bad crops,
+resulting, together with the constant waste and ravages of petty wars,
+in the most frightful famine. The people in their misery became almost
+inhuman; men died in such multitudes that it was impossible to bury
+them, and the wolves fed on their flesh; human flesh was actually
+offered for sale in the market of Tournus; and one monster, near Macon,
+living as a hermit, enticed unwary travellers into his den and there
+slew and devoured them! When found out he had a pile of forty-eight
+human skulls, those of his victims. In the midst of this horrible state
+of affairs the bishops and abbots of all parts of France met in council
+and decreed punishment upon whoever should carry arms, and upon whoever
+should use violence against defenceless persons, merchants, monks, and
+women; not even the refuge of the altar was to protect him who disobeyed
+this decree. Raising their hands to heaven all those present cried out,
+_Pax! pax! pax!_ in witness of the eternal peace compact, the _Paix de
+Dieu_--the Peace of God. Wars had caused much of their distress, and the
+kingdom was indeed weary of war, but the millennium had not yet
+come,--philosophers still tell us that it is "just beyond the sky
+line,"--and the Peace of God was ineffective.
+
+Failing to suppress war, the Church next sought, with more practical
+wisdom, to modify its horrors. In 1041 was proclaimed the _Treve de
+Dieu_--the Truce of God. All private feuds were to cease during the
+period from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, under penalty of fine,
+banishment, and exclusion from Christian communion. Then the days of the
+great feasts were included in the period of truce, as well as Advent and
+Lent. "Churches and unfortified cemeteries," says the chronicler Ranulph
+Glaber, "as well as the persons of all clerks and monks, provided they
+did not carry arms, were put under the perpetual protection of the Truce
+of God. For the future, when making war upon the seigneur, men were
+forbidden to kill, to mutilate, or to carry off as captives the poor
+people of the country, or to destroy maliciously implements of labor and
+crops." This last provision in particular is very interesting. Of
+course, powerful barons broke the truce again and again; but it was
+there as a real moral force of restraint, and the Church did not forget
+to contend for its observance, so that it must have had some effect. To
+no class in society could peace have been more welcome, more essential,
+than to women, always the sufferers in war.
+
+We have left to the last one most important question in considering the
+moral influence of the Church. Surely, the sanctity of the marriage tie
+is one of the foundation stones of morality and of civilization; upon it
+rests the home, where woman has always found her greatest and surest
+happiness. The Church had been struggling for centuries, and was to
+struggle some time longer, to make effective its opposition to marriage
+among the clergy. Among the secular priests, those not connected with a
+monastic order, marriage or concubinage had not by any means ceased, and
+we find even bishops leading scandalous lives. But the Church continued
+to fulminate its decrees, and the evil grew slowly less and less, till
+it existed only among the lower orders of the clergy and in
+out-of-the-way places. Monks and nuns alike took the three vows of
+poverty, of chastity, and of obedience. We are not concerned with the
+general question of whether or not priests should be married, or whether
+or not it is wisdom to force the observance of a vow of perpetual
+chastity upon young men and women who may have taken such a vow without
+duly considering their own temperaments, or who have been compelled to
+take it against their wills. Despite the scandals,--scandal has always a
+noisy tongue,--there should be no doubt that in the great majority of
+cases the vow of chastity was sincerely kept. Within its own limits the
+Church discouraged and was soon utterly to forbid marriage; what did it
+do to sanctify and to protect marriage outside of the ranks of the
+clergy?
+
+Marriage was made one of the seven great sacraments of the Church, and
+the breach of the marriage tie was one of the sins most severely
+punished. Adultery had been severely punished under the customary laws
+of the Franks, usually by the death of both parties with frightful
+tortures; and the Church added to the physical punishment inflicted by
+the civil law in this world the threat of eternal torments in the next.
+Nevertheless, according to the testimony of many who are satirists and
+of some who are not, it was the unmarried priest who was the most
+frequent offender. An anecdote will illustrate the prevailing looseness
+of clerical morals. Wace tells us that a sacristan of Saint-Ouen, in
+Rouen, fell in love with a lady who lived across the little river Robec.
+As he was stealing across to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped
+on the plank by which he was crossing the stream, and he tumbled therein
+and was drowned. A devil was just about to pitchfork his soul and carry
+it off when an angel appeared, contending that the sacristan had not yet
+committed the sin. The case was submitted to Duke Richard, who ordered
+that the soul should be returned to the body, and that he would then
+judge according to the sacristan's actions. Presto! it was done; and the
+monk, his ardor cooled by the ducking, went back to his abbey and
+confessed to the abbot. A popular proverb makes the story survive: "Sir
+monk, step lightly, and take good care when you cross the plank." Not
+only in the Church, but in the world, immorality was too common and too
+easily pardoned. It is significant that illegitimacy was the rule rather
+than the exception among the Norman dukes, and that William the
+Conqueror, himself illegitimate, was conspicuous in his age for marital
+fidelity.
+
+The moral theory of the Church was correct enough, however it failed in
+practice. Every precaution was taken--indeed, too many were taken--to
+prevent hasty and ill-assorted marriages. The banns had to be read three
+times in the church; the contracting parties must be of proper age; they
+must have the consent of parent or guardian; they must not be related
+within the degrees prohibited by the Church; they must not be bound by
+any previous vow of chastity or be guilty of any mortal sin.
+
+These provisions would seem to be in the main wise enough, and yet out
+of one of them grew a considerable moral evil. Divorce had been
+recognized by the Salic law: "Seeing that discord troubles their union,
+and that charity reigns not in it, N. and M., husband and wife, have
+agreed to separate and to leave each other free either to retire to a
+monastery or to remarry," without question or opposition from either
+party. So ran one of the formulas; and as a sign of the divorce the keys
+of the house were taken from the wife, or a piece of linen was torn
+before her. The Church, however, opposed divorce, and declared it
+contrary to the spirit of Christianity. Yet, if one were wealthy or
+powerful, it was easy to have a marriage annulled, on one pretext or
+another. The most frequent was the plea for divorce for reasons of
+conscience, since the contracting parties, being within the prohibited
+degrees of relationship,--a fact which they had not known at the time of
+the marriage,--were guilty of incest in the eyes of the Church, and
+prayed to be relieved from the danger of perilling their immortal souls
+by deadly sin. Other pleas were resorted to, but this seems to have been
+a favorite one. By a subtile division of a hair "'twixt south and
+southwest side," this might be considered as not divorce, but the mere
+annulment of a contract which had been illegal and unsanctified from the
+start; and the distinction was an important one, since the rich noble or
+the monarch who had disposed of an objectionable wife in this way, and
+who had absolved himself by proper penances and by sufficient gifts to
+the Church, might, and generally did, remarry.
+
+It is with the story of a divorce or forced separation that we are
+concerned in the case of Queen Bertha. Robert, the son of Hugues Caput,
+and the first real king of the Capetian line, was a devoted friend of
+Eudes, Count of Champagne and Blois, who proudly styles himself, in his
+charters, _Comes Ditissimus_,--richest count of France,--and whom Robert
+had honored with the title of count or seneschal of the royal palace.
+This Eudes had a beautiful and virtuous wife, Bertha, daughter of King
+Conrad the Pacific of Aries, and descended from the great Emperor Henry,
+the Fowler. Robert, then married to a princess named Rosella, was
+godfather to one of the children of Eudes and his fair cousin Bertha.
+Both Princess Rosella and the Comes Ditissimus died. Bertha and Robert
+already loved each other, it would seem, since neither mourned very
+long. Within a few months they were married, in spite of the protests of
+Hugues Capet, who would have liked a more powerful alliance for his son
+and heir. Although Bertha and Robert were cousins, it was only in the
+fourth degree. This actual relationship, though within the proscribed
+degrees, would have been overlooked probably, as well as the spiritual
+relationship established by Robert's having stood godfather to one of
+Bertha's children, had it not been for the prince's ill luck in
+incurring the enmity of certain powerful and active churchmen.
+Archambaud, Archbishop of Tours, had issued a special dispensation, and
+had blessed the marriage in the presence and with the consent of several
+other bishops. But to understand fully the violent opposition which the
+marriage encountered from the papal party we must go back to an episode
+in the reign of Hugues Capet.
+
+In the course of the last effort of Carl, the heir of the Carlovingian
+line, to recover dominion, the Archbishop of Rheims had betrayed Hugues
+Capet, and had agreed to introduce Carl's forces into Rheims. It was
+proved that this man, Arnoul, or Arnulph, had surrendered the keys of
+the city to the emissaries of Carl, and he himself confessed his guilt.
+Accordingly, with the sanction of an ecclesiastical court, Arnoul was
+deprived of his see, which was given to Gerbert, the tutor of the young
+King Robert. The papal party refused to recognize the jurisdiction of
+the court which had deposed Arnoul, and which still kept him imprisoned
+at Orleans, and a special legate was sent to France to protest against
+this action at the very time of Robert's marriage to Bertha. The legate
+raised his voice in protest against the incestuous and sinful marriage.
+Thinking to appease him, Robert released Arnoul and restored him to his
+archbishopric; but to do this he had to depose Gerbert, and by so doing
+he made an enemy of one of the most active and able men in the Church,
+famous as a theologian, and afterward to become Pope Silvester II.
+
+For a time, however, Bertha and Robert, who loved each other devotedly
+and lived in a simple piety quite in contrast to the licentious habits
+of the period, were left unmolested. The bribe to Rome was sufficient
+for the moment to purchase for them innocent happiness. Robert was most
+singularly devout, and was ranked almost as a saint by the
+ecclesiastical chroniclers who preserve his story for us. Though a
+handsome and well-formed man, and not altogether unfit for martial
+exercises, he delighted in pastimes rather befitting a monkish scholar
+than a soldier. He was gentle and kind to those about him, especially
+the poor and the unfortunate, and was devoted to music. He himself
+composed a number of Latin hymns for the Church, some of which are still
+retained, notably the sequence to the Holy Spirit, _Adsit nobis gratia_,
+and he set many others to tunes of his own composing. He was innocently
+vain of his powers as a musician and singer, and on a pilgrimage to Rome
+in after years, 1016, he deposited on the altar of Saint Peter his Latin
+poems set to music. The very graces and virtues for which his
+contemporaries praise Robert are the ones that make him manifestly out
+of place as King of France in the year 1000, and the misery of his
+domestic career is only more pitiful than the disorder which reigned in
+his kingdom. That one of the most pious kings of France should
+nevertheless have begun his career in opposition to the Church is very
+remarkable.
+
+While Bertha and Robert were enjoying their brief respite from
+persecution, the papacy itself was struggling for existence.. At last
+the Emperor Otho fought his way into Rome, seized the leader of the
+popular party, John Crescentius, "Senator and Consul of Rome," and
+pitched him over the walls of the castle of Saint Angelo. The unhappy
+Pope, John XVI. was replaced by the emperor's nominee, Gregory V. Almost
+as soon as Gregory was seated he summoned a council (998), in which
+Gerbert, now Robert's bitter enemy, sat as Bishop of Ravenna. This
+council, largely controlled by the vindictive Gerbert, threatened the
+kingdom of France with a universal interdict, suspending all religious
+rites but those of baptism and extreme unction, if Robert would not
+repudiate Bertha. The decree commanded "that King Robert, who has,
+contrary to the holy canons of the Church, married his cousin, Bertha,
+shall forsake her at once, and shall perform a penance of seven years,
+in accordance with the rules and customs of the Church. If he obey not,
+may he be anathema! And so also be it as regards Bertha! That
+Archambaud, Archbishop of Tours, who consecrated this incestuous union,
+and all the bishops who sanctioned it by their presence, be refused the
+Holy Communion until such time as they shall have come to Rome to make
+amends to the Holy See!"
+
+One can imagine that, to a nature as devout as Robert's, such a curse
+was almost overwhelming. Yet he and Bertha endured for some time the
+horrors which this excommunication brought upon them, and Robert
+resisted with far more spirit than one would have supposed him to
+possess. The curse fell upon France, and upon its king and queen, who
+were surely no more morally guilty than their unfortunate subjects.
+Awful were the effects of the curse, according to Petrus Damianus, who
+records with pious unction most of the signs and wonders with which the
+age was filled. All save a few of the lowest servants fled from the
+accursed presence of Robert and his queen, and even these menials, when
+they had prepared the king's food, deemed the very vessels from which he
+had eaten polluted by his touch, and purified them by fire or destroyed
+them. Bertha was reported to be a foul witch, and to have the foot of a
+goose, and was nicknamed _la reine pedauque_, or _pied d'oie_ (Queen
+Goose-foot). In her agitation and misery, the child she should have
+borne was prematurely brought forth. The charitable Damianus tells us
+that it was currently reported to be of monstrous form, having the head
+and neck of a swan and not of a human being.
+
+Whether these horrors were direct effects of God's wrath or had birth in
+the zealous imagination of a writer whose interest it was to lay on the
+colors in his description of the blasting effects of excommunication,
+Robert and Bertha had to resign themselves to the cruel separation.
+Robert's superstitious fears were worked on by his monkish advisers,
+particularly Abbo, Abbot of Fleury, "who incessantly reprimanded the
+king, in public and in, private." This holy man, says the biographer of
+Robert, "continued his reproaches until the good King acknowledged his
+fault and abandoned the wife whom it was not permitted him to possess."
+The separation seems to have taken place definitely about the year 1006,
+and Robert was to be miserable in his domestic life all the rest of his
+days.
+
+He and Bertha had passed part of their married life together in the
+midst of a veritable reign of terror. All over Christendom the belief
+was general that the end of the work! was at hand. The lurid prophecies
+of the Apocalypse were supplemented by texts believed to be prophetic of
+the Judgment Day, raked together from all parts of the Scriptures and
+from what superstitious ignorance regarded as almost of equal authority,
+the Sibylline Leaves. Preachers took as their text the horrors of the
+approaching dissolution of the world, when, according to Revelations:
+"The stars of heaven fell unto the earth... and the heavens departed as
+a scroll when it is rolled together;" or in the magnificent words of a
+hymn written long after: _Dies irae, dies illa Solvet, saeclum in favilla:
+Teste David cum Sybilla_. (Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See
+fulfilled the prophet's warning! Heaven and earth in ashes burning!)
+They supplemented this picture by accounts of the torments of hell as
+reported in the legends of those who had been granted a vision of them.
+"Repent ye! repent ye! for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Woe unto
+him who in that day shall be found still a sinner!" There was naturally
+a paralysis of all useful activities. What was the use of preparing for
+the morrow, if there was to be no morrow? During the last year of the
+century the terror reached its highest point, and only absolute needs
+were attended to. There were great donations to the Lord on the part of
+tardy sinners who thought thus to purchase remission of their sins. But
+there were also those who refused to repent, and who resolved, since
+their life was to be short, to make it as merry as it could be. While
+the former crowded the churches, weeping and praying and surrendering
+themselves to the terrors suggested by the priest, the latter gave
+themselves up to the wildest dissipation. The year 1000 passed away, and
+still the stars were in heaven, and the wicked on earth began to breathe
+more freely; and when the next year went by without any Day of Judgment,
+courage revived, and the Church began to make use of the immense gifts
+which impulsive sinners had turned over to her. New cathedrals and new
+abbeys rose all over the land.
+
+The pathos of the story of Bertha is heightened when we look at her
+successor on the throne. Even in her own day Constance, daughter of
+Guilhelm Taillefer, Count of Toulouse, was considered harsh and cruel;
+one chronicler euphemistically expresses this when he says: "There was
+as much constancy in her heart as in her name." She probably came by her
+nature honestly enough, for her mother was Arsinda, sister of that
+Foulques Nerra of cheerful memory, who, indeed, according to some
+accounts, forced the weak Robert to marry his niece. She was, says the
+chronicler, surnamed Candida on account of her excessive fairness, and
+is not infrequently called Blanche, the "fair queen." Into the rather
+primitive court of the French king, surrounded by his monks and probably
+longing for the banished Bertha, she came with a scandalous display of
+luxury and frivolity.
+
+The south of France, in contact with Italy, with the cultured Moors of
+Spain, and, through its Mediterranean ports, with the most advanced
+civilization then known, that of the Arabs, was far in advance of the
+northern provinces in civilization, or at least in luxury and knowledge
+of the arts usually accompanying civilization. Provence, especially,
+with its ancient port of Marseilles to recall memories of the most
+cultured nation of antiquity, was in material prosperity and in arts
+already advancing to that stage of civilization which was to make her,
+in the course of the next century, the mother of the first real
+literature France had known and of the first extended protest against
+the Church of Rome. The troubadours were soon to make Provence and the
+Provencal tongue famous, and the Albigenses, with their heresy, were to
+invite the destruction of this gay, brilliant, but unsound society. The
+south was already far more gay and pleasure loving than the north, where
+the ravages of wars foreign and domestic had been more terrible. And out
+of the south came Queen Constance, _la Blanche_, to a court where the
+king was more monk than king.
+
+The northerners, always disliking the men of Provence, exclaimed in
+horror against the manners and the costume of the horde of Provencal
+attendants whom Constance brought with her. "The favor of the queen,"
+says Glaber, "attracted into France and Bourgogne many natives of
+Aquitaine and Auvergne. These vain and frivolous men showed themselves
+to be as ill-regulated in their morals as they were immodest in their
+dress. Their armor and the furnishings of their horses were
+extraordinary. Their hair fell scarce to the middle of their heads (the
+fashion of shaving the back of the head was strange in northern France,
+though afterward so prevalent that William's Norman knights were
+reported by Harold's spies to be all shaven-crowned monks); they shaved
+their beards off as smooth as play actors; they wore boots indecently
+turned up in long points at the toes, robes cut off short, reaching to
+the knees and divided behind and before; in walking they hopped along!"
+Alas for France! the French and the Burgundians, formerly the most
+honest and sober of all nations, eagerly followed the "sinful example"
+set by the queen's favorites. The whole nation copied these indecent
+costumes, and short hair, short robes, and sinfully pointed shoes became
+the fashion. As the Puritans inveighed against Babylonish apparel, the
+livery of the "scarlet woman," in the shape of Cavalier curls and long
+plumes, so the divines of France made a crusade against this livery of
+the devil. They declared that the finger of Satan was in all this, and
+that the pointed shoes would infallibly carry their wearers to the realm
+of the master whose livery they wore. One can hear the very voice of Ben
+Jonson's Ananias, the Puritan, as he testifies against the costume of
+the Spaniard: "They are profane, lewd, superstitious, and idolatrous
+breeches."
+
+Nevertheless, the satanic livery was never utterly thrown aside; and
+clothes were not the only things satanic about the new queen. Constance,
+high-tempered and energetic, reigned over France through or in spite of
+King Robert. Coming of a forceful and warlike race, she must have found
+many things distasteful in the weakness and superstition which were the
+chief traits she noted in her husband. She and her kinsfolk left him
+free to compose hymns, while they ruled France. But when one of his
+favorites, Hugues de Beauvais, whom he had made count of the palace,
+suggested to Robert that he might get rid of Constance and send for the
+ever-regretted Bertha, Constance notified her strenuous uncle Foulques.
+Foulques promptly despatched a dozen brave knights, with orders to slay
+Hugues whenever and wherever they found him: they found him and murdered
+him in the very presence of the king. Robert was too weak to resist
+effectively, made his peace with the queen, and gave himself up more and
+more to religious devotions.
+
+He used to go to the church of Saint-Denis and sing with the choir and
+challenge the singers to a trial of skill. When Constance one day asked
+him to compose some song in her honor, he responded with a stave of his
+hymn: _O! Constantia martyrum_ (O! faith and constancy of the martyrs),
+with which she was as well pleased as if the reference had not been a
+bit ambiguous. On a certain occasion, as he was besieging a castle on
+the feast of Saint Hippolytus, to whom he professed a special devotion,
+he left the army and repaired to Saint-Denis to sing hymns in honor of
+the saint. While he was thus engaged, the walls of the castle fell, and
+the king's troops entered in; a manifest reward for his singing _Agnus
+Dei, dona nobis pacem!_ While he was one day at prayers, shedding many
+tears, as was his wont, the vain and worldly-minded Constance adorned
+his lance with silver ornaments. The king, finding this sinful waste,
+looked out of his door and saw a poor man near by. He sent him off to
+get some sort of tool to cut off the decorations, shut himself up in a
+room with the fellow, stripped the lance of its silver gewgaws, and gave
+them to him, bidding him begone in haste lest the queen see him.
+Constance asked what had become of the silver, and Robert "swore by the
+Lord's name, though not in earnest," that he knew not what had become of
+it.
+
+In spite of this pious perjury, we are told that Robert had a great
+horror of lying. The proof of this statement is very interesting. He had
+a reliquary made of crystal, set in a golden case, and containing no
+relic. Upon this his nobles, ignorant of the deceit, could swear without
+danger of risking their souls, in case the oath was false. And as common
+folk had souls, too, and might endanger them by false swearing, he had a
+similar reliquary, made of silver, in which was deposited nothing more
+sacred than an egg. He was constantly endeavoring to shield the petty
+malefactors whom his unworldliness had tempted to wrongdoing, and whom
+Constance would have punished. It was his habit to have the poor fed
+from his table, and on one occasion he had a fellow concealed under the
+table at his feet. The man found time between bites to cut off a heavy
+gold ornament attached to the king's knee. "What enemy of God, my good
+lord, has dishonored your gold-adorned robe?" cried Constance.
+"Undoubtedly," said Robert, "he who took it wanted it more than I, and
+with God's aid it will be of service to him." One day he saw a young
+clerk named Ogger steal a candlestick from the altar in his chapel. The
+priests were much disturbed over its loss; and the queen, in a rage,
+swore by the soul of her father that she would have the eyes of the
+priests torn from their sockets if they did not account for what had
+been stolen from the sanctuary. The priests questioned Robert, who,
+denying all knowledge of the theft, at once sent for the thief. "Friend
+Ogger," said he, "haste thee hence, lest my inconstant Constancy eat
+thee up. What thou hast taken will be enough to carry thee to thy own
+country. The Lord be with thee." When the thief was beyond danger of
+pursuit, Robert cheerfully said: "Why all this pother about a
+candlestick? The Lord has given it to some of his poor."
+
+One can well understand that however churchmen might commend this sort
+of meekness it was most irritating to Constance. She was full of energy
+and vigor, and never jested, says her biographer, about anything. She
+and her uncle Foulques, whom Robert had made governor of Paris, ruled
+France and fought against the turbulent and rebellious barons, chief
+among whom was Eudes II., Count of Blois, of Chartres, of Tours, and of
+Champagne, the son of the deposed queen, Bertha. She led in the first
+important attack upon heresy. Certain clerks in the city of Orleans
+developed a secret, heretical sect which gained many proselytes, among
+others a certain Etienne, who had been the confessor of Queen Constance.
+Their secret was discovered; they were brought to trial, refused to
+recant, and were ordered to execution. As they marched from the church
+where they had been tried to the immense funeral pyre, they passed
+Constance in the porch of the church. Recognizing Etienne among the
+thirteen prisoners, she attacked him furiously, and with a whip put out
+one eye of the defenceless victim. This vindictive queen, aggravating
+the tortures of the first victims of the new religious persecutions, is
+not a pleasant figure in French.
+
+As Robert grew older and it became necessary to determine on a
+successor,--the right of the oldest son was not yet altogether
+fixed,--Constance began to intrigue against her husband. Robert was in
+the habit of saying: "My hen pecks, but she gives me plenty of
+chickens." They had had six children; but had lost their eldest son,
+Hugues, in 1025. Of the three remaining sons, Eudes, the eldest, was an
+idiot; Henry, the second, was his father's choice; and Robert, the
+youngest, was favored by Constance, "with her habitual spirit of
+contradiction." She said, with some reason, that Henry was weak,
+inactive, deceitful, and negligent of affairs, and could no more be king
+than his father could; whereas Robert had far more energy and sense than
+his brothers. For once, the king resisted, and with the consent of the
+peers assured the succession to Henry. Constance fomented ill feeling
+between the two sons, and between Henry and his father. Robert, with the
+notion that injustice had been done him, was soon in revolt against his
+father. But the queen had always been so harsh to all her children that
+none of them seem to have had faith in her or affection for her, and the
+two brothers, Henry and Robert, soon became reconciled to each other and
+made a joint invasion of their father's dominions, pillaging his castles
+and territories. The poor king, after many ravages had been committed,
+at length bribed his sons to let him sing his last hymns in peace. Henry
+was to succeed to the throne, and Robert became Duke of Burgundy.
+
+The peace thus made did not long outlast King Robert. He died in July,
+1031, and the monks mourned their friend and protector, and many of the
+poor sincerely bewailed the loss of their "good father"; but there is no
+sign of any excessive grief on the part of Constance. She soon gave the
+kingdom cause to mourn in other fashion; for no sooner was Henry I.
+seated on his throne than his mother began to stir up rebellion against
+him. She had always been violent in private as in public life, and
+treated Henry in particular "as if she hated him like a stepmother." Her
+intrigues now were so far successful that she won over to her side most
+of the direct vassals of the crown, and the greater number of the towns
+in the duchy of France declared themselves in favor of placing Robert,
+Duke of Burgundy, on the throne. By surrendering the county of Sens to
+her old enemy, Eudes, Count of Blois, Constance gained his aid. This
+plot of a mother against her son was successful in all but one main
+point: the other son, in whose name she was preparing to wage civil war,
+took no active part against his brother, and appears to have remained
+quietly in Burgundy. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand that what
+Constance was really scheming for was the continuance of her own power,
+and that if placed on the throne he would have been completely under her
+control.
+
+In this crisis of the affairs of the kingdom, Henry, fleeing with a
+following of but twelve vavasours, called upon Normandy for aid; and
+most effective aid he had from one whose name was to become famous, a
+nucleus for the gathering of romance. This was Duke Robert of Normandy,
+surnamed Robert the Devil, who carried on a predatory warfare so savage
+and so successful that most of the revolted lords near the borders of
+Normandy "bowed their heads before him." Old Foulques Nerra, probably in
+one of his edifying fits of repentance, at length brought Constance to a
+reconciliation with Henry, reproaching her with the brutal fury with
+which she was treating her son. The miserable queen, who had caused so
+much unhappiness to her husband and to her sons, did not long survive
+the peace, dying at Melun in July, 1032. Her ally Eudes continued the
+struggle some little while, but was at last vanquished and forced to
+disgorge half of the county of Sens which Constance had given him as a
+bribe.
+
+Thus ends the life of one of the first of the French queens who really
+took an active part in affairs. Beautiful, witty, and full of graces and
+caprices essentially feminine, as well as of some masculine qualities,
+she yet appears to have inspired no love, nothing but dread, in anyone
+who came near her; and the chroniclers of the time seem to delight in
+telling anecdotes illustrative of her wickedness as contrasted with
+Robert's saintliness. But we must remember that at least she
+accomplished something, and that her enemies tell her story.
+
+At the period of which we write, Normandy was all powerful, and the
+Capets had come to look upon her dukes now as their most dangerous foes
+and now as their most useful friends. Duke Robert the Magnificent, as
+his courtiers called him, or Robert the Devil, as literature knows him,
+had an amour which is interesting as showing that class distinctions
+were not so rigid as one might think. According to Wace's story of the
+romance:
+
+        "A Faleize ont li Dus hante,...
+        Une meschine i ont amee,
+        Arlot ont nom, de burgeis nee."
+
+(The duke did much frequent Falaise,... There he loved a girl named
+Arietta, born of a burgess of the town). Arietta, the tanner's daughter,
+was to become a figure of romance in the story of Robert the Devil; but,
+romance or no romance, she was the mother of the greatest of the Norman
+dukes, William the Conqueror, born in 1028. William had hard work to
+keep his place in Normandy, but we cannot stop to tell of the long and
+successful struggle which he waged against the haughty barons who
+refused to bow to the illegitimate son of the tanner's daughter. We all
+know the story of how the citizens of Alencon, which he was besieging,
+beat skins upon the walls of one of their redoubts, crying: "Work for
+the tanner!" and how William captured the redoubt, cut off the hands and
+feet of the unlucky jokers, and threw them over the town walls.
+
+With a man of such temper, it is not unnatural that there should have
+arisen a curious story of his courtship, which began soon after this
+episode at Alencon. Engaged in constant conflict with his neighbors,
+William determined at least to secure the friendship of Flanders. He
+sought the hand of Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders.
+Mauger, William's uncle, objected to the marriage, because Matilda and
+William were cousins, and caused the clergy to prohibit it. The Pope
+issued a special pronouncement against it. With him William could not
+proceed after the manner which doubtless most commended itself to him,
+but when the Italian Lanfranc, at the monastic school of Bee, dared to
+pronounce the marriage sinful, William promptly gave orders to burn down
+the farms from which the monks drew their sustenance, and to banish
+Lanfranc. But a shrewd display of courage and wit on Lanfranc's part
+made William his friend; and soon it was agreed that if William would
+found two monasteries the sin of his marriage would be forgiven him.
+
+The chronicles of Tours report that Matilda herself objected to wedding
+the bastard of Normandy. The match, however, had been agreed to by her
+father, and William had set his heart on it. As proof of his
+determination, if not of his lover-like devotion, he waited for her as
+she came out of church one day, and whipped her till she consented to
+marry him! And as some writers assert, even after the marriage he
+continued to use this sort of suasion with his duchess, finally causing
+her death by his brutality. Despite this unlovely beginning, the
+marriage was a happy one. Matilda was beautiful, virtuous, and of strong
+character, so that she won her husband's confidence and love. In an age
+of scandalous marital infidelity, he was faithful to her. She was his
+faithful friend and counsellor through life; and when he went on that
+perilous voyage of adventure to win the English crown, it was she who
+was left in charge of the duchy of Normandy; she who was praying for her
+husband's safety in the priory she had founded at Rouen, when she heard
+the news of the great victory of Hastings, and christened the church
+Bonne Nouvelle; she who welcomed him back to his capital of Rouen after
+the success in England.
+
+The purity and devotion of the Conqueror's queen present a picture very
+different from that of Bertrade de Montfort, who, like the wicked
+Constance, was connected with the house of Anjou. Philip I., a pitiable
+_roi faineant_, had married, in 1071, Bertha of Holland, by whom he had
+had three children. Having wearied of her, he sent her off to the
+chateau of Montreuil, prepared for her long before as a wedding bower,
+and then discovering one of those convenient relationships we have
+mentioned, succeeded in having his marriage annulled. Having thus
+relieved his conscience, it was but natural that he should begin to look
+about him--he may have looked before--for a wife whom he might keep for
+a while without distressing his conscience. He found this helpmeet in
+Bertrade de Montfort, with whom he fell in love while on a trip to
+Tours, in 1092. It is true that "a good man could find naught to admire
+in her but her beauty," and that her husband, another Foulques of Anjou,
+was still living. But these are small matters when one is King of France
+and has one's heart set upon some particular lady. Foulques was not an
+attractive man; he seems to have had something like a club foot, and to
+have worn long, pointed shoes to hide his deformity; besides, he had
+already been twice divorced. Bertrade, young, beautiful, ambitious, was
+quite ready to go to the king and replace the unhappy Bertha. She eloped
+on the night following the king's visit to her husband, found an escort
+waiting for her at Meung-sur-Loire, and was conducted to Philip at
+Orleans.
+
+Philip and Bertrade decided to get married, for the duchess was anxious
+to be called queen. They were indignant because most of the bishops
+suggested that the proceeding was rather irregular, since Foulques was
+not only still living but at that moment actually preparing to bring
+back his runaway spouse by force of arms. Nevertheless, by large gifts,
+the king persuaded one bishop to consecrate his union with Bertrade.
+Foulques and the friends of the deposed queen, Bertha, made forays into
+Philip's territory, but accomplished nothing. Meanwhile, Philip incited
+one of his barons to make war on and imprison the Bishop of Chartres,
+who had dared to denounce the marriage with Bertrade. The whole power of
+the Church was soon enlisted against him, and Pope Urban II. despatched
+a special legate to dissolve the marriage, or to excommunicate Philip if
+he did not leave his paramour. The Bishop of Chartres was promptly
+released, and Philip attempted to forestall further action on the part
+of his enemies by calling a special council at Rheims to try the bishop
+on a frivolous charge. But the legate summoned another council at Autun,
+which issued a decree of excommunication against Philip and Bertrade in
+October, 1094.
+
+Though Queen Bertha was now dead, the ecclesiastical censure still held
+good. According to one of the conditions of the decree, Philip was to
+put off his crown. He obeyed this to the letter, refused to wear any
+insignia of royalty, and feigned to have ceased all intercourse with
+Bertrade. The Pope gave him till All Saints' Day, 1095, to reform, being
+afraid to use extreme measures while a rival Pope, already sustained by
+the German Emperor, might entice the King of France into his following.
+All Saints' Day came and went, and still Philip and Bertrade were living
+as man and wife. Once more Philip was excommunicated, by a council held
+at Clermont; he again made fine promises of reformation, broke his word,
+and even had the audacity to have Bertrade consecrated as queen.
+Excommunication after excommunication was pronounced against him, and
+the kingdom was put under an interdict; he continued to make most
+generous promises about sending Bertrade back where she belonged, and
+still never did he do what he promised.
+
+The terrors of excommunication had evidently lost their force, or else
+laymen and clerks alike were too much occupied with other important work
+before the council of Clermont, work whose effects were to influence
+profoundly the whole history of Europe and to bring about great social
+as well as great political changes: men were talking of the First
+Crusade. In the mighty stir of preparation, in the wild enthusiasm of
+that great movement, the king and his paramour were for the moment lost
+sight of. While men and women, and even children, were listening to the
+fierce eloquence of Peter the Hermit, and in inspired frenzy shouting
+out their approval: _Dieu le veult! Dieu le veult!_ who could stop to
+think of the idle and shifty King of France? Were they not all going to
+battle in the service of a greater king than he?
+
+Yet the motives of even these first Crusaders were in some cases far
+from that consistent purity which one would expect. Among the leaders is
+one Guilhelm, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers, a gay and famous
+troubadour, who has founded in his own domain a _maison de plaisir_
+where the inmates are dressed like nuns, a sort of Persian heaven ("A
+Persian's heaven is easily made 'Tis but black eyes and lemonade"); who
+bids an affecting farewell "to brilliant tourneys, to grandeur and to
+riches, to all that enchained his heart, for he goes in the service of
+God to find remission for his sins;" and who yet carries with him on
+this holy war a perfect swarm of the beauties (_examina puellarum_) who
+enchained his heart, and continued to enchain it, probably, until they
+were captured by the Turks. But this Guilhelm gives a still more
+interesting proof of the motives of his pious warfare. Two papal legates
+came to Poitiers in November, 1100, to hold a council. Having preached
+the Crusade, they next proceeded to renew the curse of excommunication
+upon Philip, who was still living with Bertrade. The good Count
+Guilhelm, with the red cross already upon his breast, stirred up a mob
+against the legates, led the way into the church where the council was
+sitting, and encouraged his followers to stone the assembled bishops.
+There were broken heads, and there was some bloodshed, but enough of the
+bishops stood their ground to pronounce the excommunication once more.
+
+Bertrade bore the censures with amazing effrontery, and jested about how
+the bells of the churches, silent during their stay, would begin to ring
+as they left a town; and she actually forced some priests to hold a
+service for her. But repeated curses, or the debauchery in which he had
+all his life indulged, seem to have undermined Philip's constitution. At
+any rate, he determined to relieve himself of the cares of government.
+In spite of the protests of Bertrade, who wished to prevent the power of
+the sceptre from going to the son of Queen Bertha, Philip, in 1100,
+associated his son Louis in the government.
+
+The young man proved himself a vigorous ruler, and won the love of his
+subjects by attempts to punish some of the robber barons who made life
+miserable for merchants and travellers. He became too popular to be
+altogether agreeable to his amiable stepmother, who set about planning
+to get rid of him. Louis went to visit the English king, Henry
+Beauclerc, in 1102, and was received with all the courtesy and honor due
+his rank. Bertrade despatched after him letters, sealed with the royal
+seal of Philip, instructing Henry to seize Louis and confine him in
+prison for the rest of his days. But Henry was either too wise or too
+humane to perpetrate this outrage, and sent the young prince back with
+every honor. Louis was furious; Philip denied all knowledge of the
+infamous letters; and Louis, guessing whence they came, planned to kill
+Bertrade.
+
+She, however, was not easily to be caught, and began devising means to
+procure the death of Louis. She first had resort to three clerks, who
+proposed to destroy the prince by means of sorcery, if they could
+conduct their incantations unmolested for nine days. But one of them
+confessed the plot, and the black art was abandoned for some surer
+method. The queen had Louis poisoned. He languished for several days,
+unable to eat or to sleep, and given over by the best physicians in
+France. At length, one who had learned some of the art of the Saracens
+volunteered his services; and under his care Louis's life was saved,
+though he bore traces of the poisoning all the rest of his days.
+
+Queen Bertrade, like an affectionate mother, had hoped to see one of her
+own sons seated upon the throne, and was much grieved at Louis's
+recovery. Philip, completely under her influence, actually implored his
+son to forgive this second direct attempt upon his life; and Bertrade,
+in a great fright now that her crime had failed and had been found out,
+cringed before Louis like a common servant, and at length won his
+forgiveness.
+
+Philip determined to be reconciled to the Church. At a council held at
+the close of 1104 he appeared as a sincere penitent,--barefooted, with
+unkempt hair and beard,--and solemnly swore never to live with Bertrade
+again. The curse of excommunication was removed; the council discreetly
+went about its business; and Philip went outside, and put on his shoes,
+and had his hair cut, and put on his crown, and had one ready for
+Bertrade, too. But the Church was tired of contending with him, and took
+no further notice of his irregularities, though what happened soon
+afterward was, if possible, more scandalous than all that had gone
+before.
+
+Bertrade had the address to reconcile her two husbands; and in 1106 she
+and Philip actually went to visit Foulques, in Angers, where all three
+hobnobbed most amicably, sitting at the same table, or occupying seats
+of honor in the church, with Philip seated by Bertrade's side and
+Foulques on a stool at her feet. One can hardly credit a statement like
+this, but there seems to have been no limit to Bertrade's effrontery,
+and the complete subjection of Foulques is recorded in the Latin life of
+Louis the Fat: "Although he was banished outright from her bed, she so
+mollified him that... often sitting on a stool at her feet, he submitted
+in all things to her will."
+
+Foulques, though he sat at the feet of his wife and the king's paramour,
+and though he ceased to make active claim to his share of Bertrade, has
+recorded his and his wife's infamy for us. One of his charters, for
+example, is dated thus: "This donation was made in the year one thousand
+and ninety-five after the incarnation of Our Lord, Urban being Pope, and
+France befouled by the adultery of the infamous King Philip." But this
+was in the salad days of his wrath, before Bertrade had induced him to
+sit on a stool at her feet and submit to her will in all things.
+
+In the year 1108, Philip, feeling his sins and his diseases lie heavy
+upon him, determined to take an allopathic dose of repentance to purify
+himself from the first before the second carried him off. He addressed
+special prayers to Saint Benedict, ordered that his wicked body should
+not be buried in the royal tombs at Saint-Denis, and clothed himself in
+the habit of a Benedictine monk. Thus he expired, having existed--not
+reigned--as king for forty-eight years, and was succeeded immediately by
+Louis the Fat, who was crowned within five days after the death of his
+father.
+
+This haste was not altogether without excuse, for Bertrade was still
+alive, and not wasting her time in prayers to Saint Benedict. Taking
+advantage of the disturbed state of the kingdom, she managed to form a
+coalition, headed by her brother, Amauri de Montfort, and by the
+successor of her Angevin husband, to dethrone Louis and put in his place
+her own son, Philip, Count of Mantes. But Louis was too active to be
+caught as the conspirators had planned. He summoned Philip to appear
+before the court of peers of the duchy of France, and, on his refusal,
+seized upon the strongholds of his enemies before they were prepared,
+and deprived Philip of his county of Mantes.
+
+Bertrade's last card was played, and she succumbed to her defeat. Though
+still in the height of her beauty, with not a wrinkle on her brow, she
+retired to the convent of Haute Bruyere, a dependency of the famous
+monastery of Fontevrault. Whether or not she was truly penitent for the
+evil life she had led we do not know. But there was to be short time
+left her for the cultivation of the monastic virtues; for the austerity
+of the new life soon wore her out, and she died in the convent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FAMOUS LOVERS
+
+In Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery of Paris, there is none among the
+hundreds of monuments upon which the traveller looks with more interest
+than that of the lovely and unhappy Heloise. There her body lies, with
+that of her lover-husband, Pierre Abelard. It is her story that we wish
+to tell; but her fame and that of Abelard are so intimately associated
+that one cannot tell of Heloise without first telling something of
+Abelard. The debt to fame, however, is not all on her side; to translate
+the words of a great French historian: "Alone, the name of Abelard would
+be known to-day only to scholars: linked with the name of Heloise, it is
+in every heart. Paris, above all,... has kept the memory of the immortal
+daughter of the Cite with exceptional and unchanging fidelity. The
+eighteenth century and the Revolution, so pitiless towards the Middle
+Ages, revived this tradition with the same ardor which led them to
+destroy so many other memories. The children of Rousseau's disciples
+still go in pilgrimage to the monument of this great saint of love, and
+each spring sees pious women placing fresh crowns of flowers upon the
+tomb in which the Revolution reunited the two lovers." We shall not,
+therefore, attempt to part those whom love has for more than seven
+centuries joined together, and shall tell of Abelard as well as of
+Heloise.
+
+The great University of Paris was already famous in the twelfth century.
+Professors, most of them ecclesiastics, lectured on all the foolish
+subtilties of the learning of the day to crowds of students collected
+from every quarter of Europe. At the monastic school of Notre Dame the
+most distinguished lecturer on dialectic,--meaning philosophy and logic
+as applied to philosophy,--at the close of the eleventh century, was
+Guillaume de Champeaux. The method of instruction was, necessarily,
+almost entirely oral, for books were worth almost their weight in coin.
+It was the custom for the professor to encourage discussions with the
+students and to overwhelm them with the weight of his wisdom and the
+acuteness of his reasoning. In this fashion Guillaume had long
+triumphed, and had, we may fancy, acquired no little of that dogmatic
+habit of mind which is fostered by unchallenged teaching. About the year
+1100 his ascendency was seriously threatened by a young Breton, scarcely
+yet a man, who had come to his school as a student and had had the
+temerity to overcome him in argument. This was Pierre Abelard, soon
+famous as a logician, philosopher, and theologian, now remembered
+chiefly because of his connection with the fair and noble Heloise.
+Abelard was born at Pallet, or Palais, not far from Nantes. He was the
+eldest son of a family of some distinction, and his father, Berenger,
+was determined to give his son an education in keeping with his own
+knightly rank. Berenger himself was better educated than most of the
+gentlemen of his class, and there seems to have been a decided leaning
+to devoutness in the family, since both Berenger and his wife, Lucie,
+took monastic vows later in life. At any rate, Pierre, after a taste of
+learning, determined to devote himself entirely to the pursuit of
+knowledge. Let us see how he tells this part of his own story. "The
+progress that I made in learning attached me to its pursuit with an ever
+increasing ardor, and such was the charm that it exercised over my mind
+that, renouncing the glory of arms, my own heritage, my own privileges
+as eldest son, I abandoned forever the camp of Mars to take refuge in
+the bosom of Minerva. Preferring the art of dialectic to all the other
+teachings of philosophy, I exchanged the arms of war for those of logic,
+and sacrificed trophies of the battlefield for the joys of contest in
+argument. I took to travelling from province to province, going wherever
+I heard that the study of this art received special honor, and always
+engaging in argument, like a veritable emulator of the Peripatetics."
+
+In this way, Abelard, still under twenty, came to the school of
+Guillaume de Champeaux. Received at first with honor, as an intelligent
+pupil, Abelard remained some time, perhaps two years. But his restless,
+inquisitive, and, above all, rational mind could not accept calmly what
+seemed to it untrue. Abelard, a mere boy, dared to dispute with his
+master, Guillaume, and, what is far worse, to get the better of
+arguments on Guillaume's own peculiar subject. The school was divided
+into two parties. Guillaume, being the more influential, prevented his
+pupil from establishing himself as a lecturer in Paris, and Abelard
+removed to Melun, at that time a royal residence and a city of some
+importance. Here he opened a school of his own, which prospered so
+greatly, in spite of the jealousy of Guillaume and the older teachers,
+that he removed to Corbeil, near Paris, and was soon recognized as more
+than the equal of his old instructor. But his health broke down under
+the strain; he retired to rest and recuperate in his native land, and
+remained there several years. Returning about 1108, he again met
+Guillaume in argument, in the convent of Saint-Victor, outside Paris,
+and again vanquished him, this time so completely that Guillaume gave up
+his chair in Paris. His jealousy, however, still kept Abelard from
+establishing himself in the great city. The young philosopher opened his
+school on Mont Sainte-Genevieve, a hill just outside the walls of the
+Paris of that day, where he taught with brilliant success, till summoned
+to Brittany by his mother Lucie, then about to take the veil. On his
+return from this trip he determined to study theology. The venerable
+Anselm of Laon was the most distinguished teacher of theology, and to
+him Abelard went. Here is part of his comment on Anselm, which will help
+us to understand something of the writer's character.
+
+"He enjoyed marvellous facility of speech, but his thought was without
+value, even without good sense. The fire that he kindled filled his
+house with smoke, but did not illuminate it. He was a tree dense with
+foliage and beautiful from afar, but found fruitless when examined more
+closely. I had come to him to gather fruit; I found in him the fig tree
+cursed by the Lord, or the old oak to which Lucan compares Pompey: But
+the shadow of a great name, the lofty oak in the midst of the fruitful
+field." With such an opinion of his preceptor, it is not surprising that
+Abelard grew impatient and talked imprudently. The immediate result was
+that the young scholar proved, to his own satisfaction and apparently to
+that of his hearers, that he could lecture on theology, as Anselm
+understood theology, by the aid of ordinary intelligence alone. The
+ultimate result was that he made an enemy of Anselm. He returned to
+Paris--about 1115--in triumph, was given the chair formerly held by
+Guillaume de Champeaux, and became a canon of the cathedral of Notre
+Dame.
+
+During the three or four years that followed this signal triumph over
+his old master, Abelard enjoyed a popularity and a reputation for
+learning almost without parallel. He was of handsome presence, polished
+and winning in manners, accomplished even in the little arts and graces
+of the society of the period. All this would account for his personal
+popularity; but his was really a brilliant mind, fascinatingly if
+dangerously logical, and straightforward in dealing with vexed questions
+of philosophy and theology. And with all his learning he knew how to
+meet the difficulties of ordinary minds, to present his arguments in a
+style not only simple but lucid and entertaining. He brought to his work
+a precious quality--enthusiasm. From all parts of Europe students
+flocked to him, by hundreds, by thousands; and with the offerings they
+brought he was rich. Then it was that pride prepared his ruin.
+"Believing myself henceforth the only living philosopher, fancying that
+I had no more opposition to encounter or accusation to fear, I commenced
+to give rein to my passions, I who had always lived in the greatest
+continence. The more I advanced in the paths of philosophy and theology,
+the further I was getting, by my impure life, from philosophers and
+saints." How much of this confession is real humility, and how much mere
+pretence, exaggeration, and vain rhetoric, we cannot say. It is an
+unfortunate fact that what is recognized as the language of religion is
+so highly colored, so tropical, so manifestly not to be taken in its
+absolute and literal sense, that one cannot estimate a character by
+autobiographic testimony of this sort. What Rousseau meant when he
+confessed that he "gave rein to his passions" we know full well, for he
+tells us. What, or rather how much, Abelard means we cannot tell, since
+his language is evidently in large part figurative. We do not think,
+however, that he was ever really a libertine.
+
+In his own account of his love story Abelard says that he was attracted
+by the beauty, the youth, and the mental attainments of Heloise, the
+niece of Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame, who had loved her tenderly and
+had educated her with unusual care. Smitten more by the physical than by
+the mental graces of the girl, then about eighteen, Abelard sought a
+pretext to ingratiate himself with Fulbert, and to enter his house as a
+lodger. The opportunity of having his beloved niece instructed by a
+person of such distinction was more than Fulbert could let pass. In the
+intimate relations of teacher and pupil Abelard also found his
+opportunity; and the two were soon plainly lovers in the eyes of all the
+world save Fulbert, who refused to believe in the treachery of his
+friend and the shame of his niece. Abelard, who was in his thirty-ninth
+year, loved with all the ardor of youth; he wrote passionate love songs,
+which were long popular but have been lost; he neglected his work, and
+devoted his time to Heloise instead of to his lectures on theology. At
+last even Fulbert could no longer refuse to believe. The lovers were
+separated, but continued to meet in secret. Not long after the first
+discovery of their relations by her uncle, Heloise found herself about
+to become a mother. Abelard stole her away one night, while Fulbert was
+absent, and fled with her to Brittany, where she remained with his
+sister until after the birth of her son, whom she named Astrolabe.
+
+To appease Fulbert, who was thirsting for revenge but dared not pursue
+the pair into Brittany, the stronghold of Abelard's family, Abelard
+proposed to marry Heloise, provided the union be kept secret, so as not
+to jeopardize his interests or prospects in the Church. Heloise, devoted
+body and soul to Abelard, would not hear of a marriage which might ruin
+his career, and was with difficulty brought to consent even to a secret
+union. Fulbert, seeing no other means of redress, accepted Abelard's
+proposition, and gave his word to keep the marriage a secret. Heloise
+and Abelard secretly came back to Paris and were wedded a few days
+later, the ceremony being performed at dawn, in the presence of Fulbert
+and a few of his friends.
+
+But the temporary disappearance from Paris of so noteworthy a person as
+Abelard could not be concealed. The whole town had known of his passion
+for Heloise, and the gossips now guessed, no doubt, why he had
+disappeared, and why Heloise also had gone. We do not need to be told
+that the surmises made, all so dishonorable to his niece, must have been
+galling in the extreme to Fulbert. He could not endure the shame of his
+niece, and tried to quell the scandal by letting the news of the
+marriage leak out. Abelard says that Fulbert told it himself, in
+violation of his oath of secrecy--for which we can hardly blame him as
+much as Abelard does. The devoted Heloise, to protect Abelard, flatly
+denied the marriage; not all Fulbert's entreaties and threats could move
+her to admit that she was anything but Abelard's mistress. Beside
+himself with anger and shame, Fulbert grew so violent that Heloise fled
+to a nunnery at Argenteuil, near Paris, Abelard aiding her in her
+flight. At Argenteuil Abelard had her dressed in the monastic habit,
+though she did not take the vows.
+
+We must admit that there were some grounds for supposing, as Fulbert and
+his family believed, that Abelard meant to rid himself of his wife by
+having her shut up in the convent: and they had experienced enough of
+her self-sacrificing firmness to know that she would offer no resistance
+to Abelard's wishes, if such were his wishes. Determined at least to
+punish him, they bribed one of his servants, broke into his house at
+night, and inflicted upon him the most severe and brutal mutilation. If
+Heloise was forced to be a nun, Abelard should be fit for nothing but a
+monk.
+
+The perpetrators of this Draconian vengeance fled. Paris was all agog
+with the shame of the brilliant philosopher. There were partisans in
+plenty on his side, and Abelard takes pleasure in telling us that two of
+the perpetrators of the crime, including his servant, were captured,
+blinded, and mutilated as he had been. The justice of the Middle Ages
+never erred on the side of mercy. Abelard fell into the most abject
+despair, but still we see in him the same dominant regard to his career
+in the world. When his friends came about him, particularly the clerks,
+with their lamentations and their manifestations of compassion, he says:
+"I suffered more from their compassion than from the pain of my wound; I
+felt my shame more than my actual mutilation." He felt not only the
+shame, but the ruin of all his ambitions. "In this state of hopelessness
+and of utter confusion it was, I admit, rather a feeling of shame than
+predilection for the vocation that impelled me towards the shades of a
+cloister." Ever ready to obey his wishes, Heloise took the veil in the
+convent of Argenteuil at the same time that Abelard entered the abbey of
+Saint-Denis. Heloise was not yet twenty; did her youthful heart, full of
+love of life, yearn for the cramped life of the nunnery? We shall later
+see what she herself says upon this score; for the present suffice it to
+note that even Abelard pauses in the account of his woes to praise her
+complete abnegation of self, and to tell us that she went to the altar
+where the irrevocable vows were to be taken, repeating in the midst of
+her sobs the lament of Cornelia: "O my husband, greatest of men! worthy
+of a bride far better than I! Had Fate such power over a head so
+illustrious? Wretch that I am, why did I wed thee only to bring woe upon
+thee? Be thou now avenged in the sacrifice I so willingly make for
+thee!"--(Lucan, Pharsalia, VIII., 1. 94.) The convent was to her a
+punishment; but as she goes to it she does not think of her punishment,
+but only of his.
+
+Let us leave Heloise for the present and pursue the story of Abelard.
+His troubles were just beginning; henceforth almost everything seemed to
+go wrong with him. Scarcely recovered from his injuries, he was besought
+by his former pupils to resume his lectures, while the monks of
+Saint-Denis, thinking to gain credit through their illustrious recruit,
+also urged him to teach again. These same monks Abelard had found far
+from congenial. They were covetous, narrow-minded, and outrageously
+licentious. He was, therefore, the more willing to undertake his old
+work, and opened a modest school at the little village of Maisoncelle,
+in Brie, where the monks of Saint-Denis had a priory. Here, once more,
+crowds came to hear him, and he felt so encouraged that he ventured to
+put in book form some of his theological and philosophical opinions, at
+the instance and for the use of his students. Neither misfortune nor the
+wish of Job that his adversary had written a book had taught him
+caution; in his book, probably the _Introductio ad Theologiam_ that has
+come down to us, he ventured to discuss even the most obscure and
+jealously guarded mysteries of the faith, and to discuss them with the
+same lucidity, directness, and acuteness of reason that had made him
+famous as a lecturer. He was, indeed, in the habit of acting upon one of
+the phrases which one may cull from his writings as characteristic of
+the man's mental attitude: "Understand, that you may believe." Abelard
+found, like hundreds of others who have proceeded in this way, that his
+reason could not account, to its own satisfaction, for all the things
+called of faith. He was constantly allowing himself to be led on in
+discussion until he found himself confronted with a dilemma: either to
+follow logic still further and end in infidelity, or to silence, as best
+he could, the voice of reason by an appeal to authority and to faith. On
+the present occasion it was an utterance on the dogma of the Trinity
+that his enemies seized upon. The leaders of the persecution were two
+former classmates, who now intrigued against him. Without examining him,
+without giving him a chance to discuss, justify, or explain his
+doctrine, a council, assembled at Soissons in 1121, condemned his book,
+not so much for what it taught, as because the author had presumed to
+teach theology without definite authority from the Church. Summoned
+before the council--the decision had been reached and the trial
+conducted without his presence--Abelard was forced to throw his book
+into the flames. As a confession of faith he was made to recite the
+Athanasian creed, and, to humiliate him still further, they brought him
+the text, as if he could not recite from memory that which was known by
+every child. The man's overwrought nature gave way under this last
+exhibition of petty malice. He tells us: "I read (the creed) as well as
+I could for sobs and tears." He was then delivered to the abbot of
+Saint-Medard to be confined to the monastery for an indefinite period.
+
+He soon obtained permission to return to Saint-Denis, but here his
+tongue once more got him into trouble. The patron saint of the abbey,
+the patron saint of all France, was Saint Denis, whom the ignorant monks
+of the abbey, jealous of the dignity of their patron, identified with
+Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of Saint Paul. Abelard pointed out
+to them a passage in Bede which proved the whole thing a legend. Abelard
+was perfectly right, but in the eyes of his brother monks he was
+certainly a traitor, probably an emissary of the devil. His life at
+Saint-Denis becoming unbearable, he fled at night to Champagne, and,
+after some little opposition, was permitted to retire to a desert place
+not far from Troyes. Here he built an oratory of reeds and thatch,
+dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and here he dwelt as a hermit. But even
+here pupils sought him out. To gain his living, he opened a school; and
+the desert gave birth to scores of little huts and tents, in which his
+eager hearers lived. His own little oratory being too small to
+accommodate the crowds, the students built for him a new and larger
+temple, which, in gratitude for the consolation he had found here, he
+dedicated to the Trinity and named Paraclete, in honor of the Holy
+Ghost, the Comforter.
+
+But he was tormented by new dangers, or at least by new fears. A nature
+so hypersensitive perhaps conjured up hobgoblins of persecution out of
+pure imagination. "I could not hear of an assemblage of churchmen
+without thinking that its object was to condemn me." He even cherished
+the idea of flying from Christendom, to live among the infidels. When
+the abbacy of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, a remote place on the coast of
+Brittany, was offered to him, he hastened to accept, thinking that if he
+gave up teaching the persecution would cease. This was about 1128, and
+for nearly ten years Abelard struggled on there. It was a struggle, for
+he found the monks not only undisciplined, and given to licentious
+pleasures, but positively criminal. One gets a picture of the abbot and
+the abbey in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_, where Lucifer, in the guise
+of a monk, gets into the refectory of the convent of Hirschau and tells
+the monks how much more delightful is life in his own abbey of
+Saint-Gildas de Rhuys:
+
+        From the gray rocks of Morbihan
+        It overlooks the angry sea;
+        The very sea-shore where,
+        In his great despair,
+        Abbot Abelard walked to and fro,
+        Filling the night with woe,
+        And wailing aloud to the merciless seas
+        The name of his sweet Heloise!
+        Whilst overhead
+        The convent windows gleamed as red
+        As the fiery eyes of the monks within,
+        Who with jovial din
+        Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin!.
+        Abelard!...
+        He was a dry old fellow....
+        There he stood,
+        Lowering at us in sullen mood,
+        As if he had come into Brittany
+        Just to reform our brotherhood!...
+        Well, it finally came to pass
+        That, half in fun and half in malice,
+        One Sunday at Mass
+        We put some poison into the chalice.
+        But, either by accident or design,
+        Peter Abelard kept away
+        From the chapel that day,
+        And a poor, young friar, who in his stead
+        Drank the sacramental wine,
+        Fell on the steps of the altar, dead!
+
+The facts here presented are essentially the same as those vouched for
+by Abelard himself, even to the poisoning of the young monk. There were
+two attempts of this kind, and the wicked monks also hired assassins to
+waylay their abbot, who lived in constant terror of his life. He strove
+to control his monks by every sort of means, but at length was forced to
+fly to the protection of a friend in Brittany. He did not definitely
+abandon his abbey for some time, probably not before 1138; but his
+regular connection with it ceased some years earlier.
+
+The years of his struggle with the monks of St. Gildas were not without
+their periods of relief. In the midst of his selfish preoccupation with
+his own tribulations his thoughts were distracted by solicitude for
+Heloise. Heloise, in the nunnery of Argenteuil, had led a life so
+exemplary that she had won universal esteem. But it happened, says
+Abelard, "that the Abbot of Saint-Denis had claimed, as a dependency
+formerly subject to his jurisdiction, the Abbey of Argenteuil, in which
+my sister in Christ, rather than my spouse, had taken the veil. Having
+obtained possession, he expelled the congregation of nuns, of whom my
+companion was prioress." When this happened Abelard bestirred himself to
+provide for Heloise and her nuns, and at the same time to provide for
+the maintenance of religious services in his old temple of the
+Paraclete. He returned thither, and invited the nuns to come. He donated
+to them the oratory and its dependencies, and Pope Innocent II.
+confirmed the donation to them and to their successors forever. For some
+time Heloise and her nuns endured great privations, for the Paraclete,
+after its abandonment by Abelard, had relapsed into the condition of a
+wilderness; "but," continues Abelard, "for them, too, the Lord, showing
+himself in very truth the Comforter, touched with pity and good-will the
+hearts of the people in the neighborhood. In one single year... the
+fruits of the earth multiplied around them more than I could have made
+them do had I lived a century... The Lord granted that our dear sister,
+who directed the community, should find favor in the eyes of all men:
+bishops cherished her as their daughter, abbots as their sister, laymen
+as their mother; all admired equally her piety, her wisdom, and her
+incomparably sweet patience."
+
+It has been doubted by some biographers whether Heloise ever saw her
+lover after she took the veil. His language in the passage just quoted
+as well as that in the following would seem to leave no room for doubt
+that they met frequently at this time: "All their neighbors blamed me
+for not doing all that I could, all that I ought, to help them in their
+misery, when the thing would have been so easy for me to do, by
+preaching. Accordingly I made them more frequent visits, in order to
+work for their good." The voice of calumny, he continues, would not even
+yet be still; but, in spite of evil tongues, "I was resolved to do my
+best to take care of my sisters of the Paraclete, to administer their
+affairs for them, to increase their respect by my very bodily presence
+in such a way as to give me, at the same time, a better opportunity to
+look out for their wants." When or how often he visited the Paraclete we
+do not know; but in some of these visits Heloise and Abelard must have
+met again.
+
+While visiting a friend, during one of his enforced flights from
+Saint-Gildas, Abelard wrote the history of his woes, _Historia
+Calamitatum_, to which we owe most of the details given previously. This
+work, in the form of a letter, is addressed to a friend whose name we do
+not know. Abelard calls him "my old friend and very dear brother in
+Christ, my intimate companion," so that it is at least certain that he
+was a clerk. It may have been that this letter was meant for Peter the
+Venerable, who afterward showed himself a devoted friend to Abelard as
+well as to Heloise. But to whomsoever the letter was written, it came
+into the hands of her who had sacrificed so much for the writer. All the
+old love awoke in Heloise's heart when chance threw in her way the
+story, in Abelard's own hand, of their misfortunes. Moved beyond her
+powers of repression, her feelings overflowed in a beautiful letter to
+her lost husband. In all the literature of love there is nothing finer
+than this letter, either for passion or for tenderness and pathos. It is
+no wonder that Abelard replied, as she besought him to do. A sort of
+correspondence was opened; she wrote three letters in all, and he four.
+The actual text of these letters is in a Latin manuscript of a date one
+hundred years later than the time of Heloise. The preservation of such a
+series of letters has seemed to some investigators improbable, but there
+is every reason to believe that Heloise herself would have collected and
+preserved with the greatest care a correspondence so precious to her.
+That the letters excited the highest admiration from the very first we
+have ample proof, for one of the authors of the _Romance of the Rose_,
+Jean Clopinel, translated them as early as 1285. In the fifteenth
+century they were printed, and since then numberless translations,
+imitations, and perversions have appeared. We need feel no doubt,
+therefore, that we are reading an actual love letter, dating from about
+1135, when we follow the glowing lines addressed to Abelard by Heloise.
+
+There is naturally a marked difference in the tone of the letters, due
+to a difference of character and to different environment. While
+passages in the first letter of Heloise are almost lyric in their
+intensity, like the words of a Juliet, at times almost of a Sappho, the
+reply from Abelard is apparently cold in many places, certainly
+constrained, only occasionally throbbing an answer to the touch of her
+whom he had loved. As we shall have some very unfavorable things to say
+of Abelard's character in general, it seems but fair to say that this
+constraint and evident desire to suppress the violence of Heloise's love
+and to direct her thoughts to the duties of her calling cannot be
+charged against him as a fault. Not one of his replies shows lack of
+affection. In justice to him we may say that he was seeking to teach her
+resignation; to divert her thoughts from the past, where was only storm
+and shipwreck in their brief love.
+
+It is pleasant to believe that, when he wrote these letters, Abelard was
+in some sort aware of and repentant for the great wrong he had done.
+There was never a more disgustingly deliberate and inhumanly selfish
+seduction than that of Heloise by Abelard. He was by nature excessively
+vain of his personal appearance no less than of his attainments. We have
+seen how he speaks of Anselm; in the same tone, in the same florid,
+turgid, pedantic style he was constantly boasting of his achievements.
+Having won all the laurels available in the intellectual world, he
+sought new experiences. It has been remarked, not inaptly, that this
+sudden awakening of the man in the scholar is a reproduction of the
+Faust legend with living actors. As the scholar, Faust, bent with age
+and labors, is suddenly transformed into the youthful, ardent, and
+selfish lover, so Abelard's long dormant passions transform him. But his
+real nature is not altered; he is always fundamentally selfish. The very
+terms in which he relates his first feelings toward Heloise are almost
+brutal. He praises the unusual extent of her knowledge, an attraction of
+special force for him; and then, "physically, too, she was not bad."
+While he condescends to allow that Heloise was "not bad" as regards
+looks, it is quite another tale with regard to himself: "Seeing her
+adorned with all the charms that attract lovers, I thought to enter into
+a liaison with her, and I felt sure that nothing would be easier than to
+succeed in this design. I enjoyed such reputation, and had so much grace
+of youth and good looks, that I thought I should have no rebuff to fear,
+whoever might be the woman whom I should honor with my love."
+
+All through the man's career one finds the same exaggerated self-esteem,
+the same preoccupation with his own selfish interests. He positively
+chuckles over the perfect success of his ruse to deceive Fulbert.
+"Fulbert was fond of his money. Add to this the fact that he was eager
+to procure for his niece all possible advantages in belles-lettres. By
+flattering these two passions, I easily won his consent, and obtained
+what I desired.... He urged me to devote to her education all of my
+spare time, by day as well as by night, and not to fear to punish her
+should I find her at fault. I wondered at his naivete!... Entrusting her
+to me not only for instruction but for chastisement, what was this but
+allowing full licence to my desires and furnishing me, even against my
+will, with the opportunity of conquering by blows and threats if
+caresses should be unavailing?" When he has ruined this niece, of whom
+Fulbert was so proud, a moment of apparent remorse comes to him as he
+witnesses the old man's distress: "I promised him any reparation which
+it might please him to demand; I protested that what I had done would
+surprise no one who had ever felt the violence of love and who knew into
+what abysses women had, since the very beginning of the world, plunged
+the greatest men. To appease him still further, I offered him a sort of
+atonement _far greater than anything he could have hoped: I proposed to
+marry her whom I had seduced, on condition only that the marriage be
+kept secret, so as not to injure my reputation._" The italics are ours;
+they can but faintly indicate our astonishment at the impudence no less
+than the selfishness of this piece of condescension. This passage is
+followed by four pages devoted to pedantic arguments, enforced by appeal
+to historic cases, seeking to prove how prejudicial a thing marriage is
+to holy men, to wise men, to great men, and that therefore it must be so
+to Abelard. All this argument he ascribes to Heloise, who implored him
+not to marry her; but the tone is his own; there is never a thought of
+what it may mean for her, only for himself. In the same way, after
+Fulbert has taken vengeance on him, in two pages of lamentations over
+his fate there is not one word of pity for the grief of the woman who
+had given all to him. It is: How shall I appear in public? What a wreck
+I have made of my life! Not once: How shall I care for Heloise? What
+amends can I make her for the wreck of her young life? One need not
+wonder--since this was the sentiment of the period--that he fears the
+vengeance of God only because he has broken the rule of continence, not
+at all because he has led into wrong doing one who trusted and loved
+him.
+
+The shame of his punishment and the griefs of his life do seem to have
+made some impression on him, however. Abelard actually learns to speak
+of "the shameful treachery of which I was guilty towards your uncle."
+One can but compare him with Rousseau; those who have read the latter's
+fascinating, eloquent, but disgusting _Confessions_ cannot fail to
+remember that there is the same inordinate vanity and selfishness in
+them as young men, the same misery and insane fear of foes, sometimes
+purely imaginary, in them as old men.
+
+Beginning as a vulgar passion, there is no doubt that Abelard's feeling
+for Heloise afterward became more honorable. After their separation, and
+the softening, chastening influence of his misfortunes, he developed for
+her a real affection. Though there is a constraint, a coldness in the
+address of his letters, and often too much solicitude about form and too
+much display of erudition, the heart of the man is moved in spite of
+himself. He begins his first letter to her: "To Heloise, his
+well-beloved sister in Christ, Abelard, her brother in Christ;" the
+second: "To the spouse of Christ, the servant of that same Christ." But
+he shows a tenderness for her at the very start; if he has not written
+to her and advised her before, he says, it is because he had such
+absolute confidence in her judgment. He calls her his "sister, once so
+dear in the flesh," and sends her a Psalter, which she is to use in
+imploring the Divine mercy for him. He will give counsel to her and to
+her nuns, if she desires it. And here he can dissemble no longer: "But
+enough of your holy congregation,... it is to you, to you whose goodness
+will, I know, have such power with God, that I address myself....
+Remember in your prayers him who is your very own." He sends a form of
+prayer which she and her nuns are to use for him. Then the man once more
+gets the better of the monk: "If it chance that the Lord deliver me up
+into the hands of mine enemies, and that they, victorious, put me to
+death, or if, while far from you, some accident should bring me to that
+goal whither all flesh is tending, let my body, whether it be already
+buried or simply abandoned, be brought under your care, I implore you,
+to your cemetery."
+
+It is pleasant to read his letters, after one has become convinced that
+the man really loved Heloise; then, one finds in them gentleness and
+consideration for her feelings. With patience and adroitness, he answers
+the questions she asks, distracts her thoughts, still too much intent on
+him, and works out for her an elaborate scheme of government for use in
+the Paraclete; and one can understand that this, if anything, would have
+been a consolation to Heloise, to feel that the whole tenor of her life
+was regulated by the affectionate legislation of the man whom she had
+loved.
+
+About the love of Heloise we need not hesitate. "Truly, she did love
+him," says the old chronicler of Saint Martin de Tours, and the ages
+since have been but echoing this. We must try, however, to form some
+more definite idea of the personality of one who is perhaps the greatest
+figure in an actual romance that the world has known. Of her beauty
+there can be no question; but we neither know nor very greatly care
+whether she was tall and dark or slender and fair. Probably we should be
+safe in assuming, on general principles, that she was a blonde, since
+the predilection for that style of beauty was so strong that Saint
+Bernard devotes a whole sermon to proving that there is no contradiction
+in the statement in the Song of Songs: "I am black, but comely." The
+most remarkable thing about her was her learning. Even when Abelard
+first met her, she was "most distinguished for the extent of her
+learning,"... "in great renown throughout the kingdom" for her
+proficiency. Her knowledge included not only Latin, but Greek and even
+Hebrew, both rarely understood even among men in a day when men usually
+got all and women none of the education that could be had. Her monastery
+at the Paraclete became a school as famous in its way as Abelard had
+made Paris.
+
+Of another trait in her character, too, we can speak with certainty.
+Together with her learning went firmness of judgment and perfect sanity,
+the elements which go to make up what we vaguely call character. We have
+seen Abelard expressing his confidence in her wisdom and judgment. Saint
+Bernard, the bitter enemy of Abelard, could not withhold his admiration
+from her, although she herself, a faithful partisan of her husband,
+always spoke of Saint Bernard as "the false Apostle." The latter, as was
+natural in a man renowned for intellect and for asceticism, was more
+struck by the grandeur of her character than moved by her personal
+charms, and he wrote a letter to the Pope, commending her as a prioress,
+in a tone of lofty esteem rather than sympathy. Her own conduct, we have
+remarked, was above reproach, and her convent was so well governed that
+its rule became the standard for all the convents of her day. Whatever
+may have been the violence of her grief over the separation from
+Abelard, she was too proud to expose her feelings to the world. She
+lived on bravely, honorably, respected by high and low, yet making no
+secret of the fact that she had loved and still did love Abelard. One
+does not wonder that she won the popular fame which has kept her name
+alive, and which has fixed the epithet applied by Villon some three
+centuries later: _La tres-sage Heloise_. In all the happy phrases of the
+_Ballade des Belles Dames du Temps Jadis_ there is no juster epithet.
+
+In striking contrast to the brutal selfishness of Abelard is the noble
+disinterestedness and complete effacement of self seen in the conduct of
+Heloise. Realizing that with him success in his vocation is everything
+and love but an episode, she is content. More than this, she does
+everything in her power to make him sacrifice her for the sake of the
+career which she knows he is bent upon. She flatters him, feeds his
+vanity, already overgreat, and consistently keeps out of view her own
+woman's feelings. When Abelard, with what he considers unusual and
+exemplary generosity, offers to marry her--one can fancy that he was not
+very urgent--this is part of the argument she uses to dissuade him: "She
+asked," says Abelard, "what atonement would not the world have a right
+to require of her should she deprive it of such a light? What curses she
+would call upon her head! What a loss this marriage would be to the
+Church! What tears it would cost philosophy! Would it not be an unseemly
+and deplorable thing to see a man whom nature had created for the whole
+world made the slave of one woman?... The marriage would be a shame and
+a burden to me... What agreement could there be between the labor of the
+school and the cares of a house, between the desk and the cradle?... Is
+there a man who, devoted to the meditations of philosophy or to the
+study of the Scriptures, could endure the cries of a child, the singing
+of the nurse as she put it to sleep, the continual coming and going of
+the servants, the incessant worries of young children?"
+
+That Abelard has reported her arguments with accuracy we need not doubt
+when we come upon this remarkable and often quoted passage in her first
+letter: "I never thought... of my own wishes; it was always yours, you
+know yourself, that my heart was bent upon satisfying. Although the name
+of wife seems both more sacred and more enduring, I should have
+preferred that of mistress, or even concubine... thinking that, the more
+humble I made myself for your sake, the more right I should have to your
+favor, and the less stain I should put upon the brilliancy of your
+glory."
+
+When their misfortunes came upon them and Abelard wanted her to enter
+the cloister she obeyed without complaint; but the truth comes out at
+the close of her first letter: "When you entered the service of God, I
+followed, nay, I preceded you... You made me first take the veil and the
+vows, you chained me to God before yourself. This mistrust, the only
+lack of confidence in me you ever showed, filled me with grief and
+shame, me, who would, God knows, have followed you or have gone before
+you unhesitatingly into the very flames of hell! For my heart was no
+longer with me but with you." In this letter are the only things that
+even look like reproaches on her part; she complains of his not writing
+to her, of his grudging her even the poor consolation of a letter, when
+she had done all for him: "Only tell me, if you can, why, since the
+retirement from the world which you yourself enjoined upon me, you have
+neglected me. Tell me, I say, or I will say what I think, and what is on
+everybody's lips. Ah! it was lust rather than love which attracted you
+to me... and that is why, your desire once satisfied, all demonstrations
+of affection ceased with the desire which inspired them." She implores
+him, therefore, to write and silence these disquieting voices in her
+heart.
+
+There was no hypocrisy in Heloise; she never was resigned to her
+seclusion in the convent, and never pretended to be. She wrote to
+Abelard that she was continuing to live in the convent only to obey him,
+"for it was not love of God, but your wish, your wish alone which cast
+my youth into the midst of monastic austerities." From the very
+monastery of which she was prioress she writes her burning letters. The
+first is superscribed: _Domino suo, imo patri, conjugi suo, imo fratri;
+ancilla sua, imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror; Abelardo Heloissa_: "To
+her lord, nay, to her father; to her husband, nay, to her brother; his
+servant, nay, his daughter; his wife, nay, his sister; to Abelard,
+Heloise." She seems to lack words to voice the passionate devotion of
+her heart, and comes at the last to the best and simplest, a veritable
+cry of the heart it is To Abelard, Heloise. Even in the letters
+subsequent to Abelard's patient endeavor to allay the transports of
+devotion to a mere man in one who had vowed her life to Christ, she does
+not restrain her feelings entirely. She superscribes them: "To him who
+is all for her after Christ, she who is all for him in Christ," and
+finally, "To her sovereign master, his devoted slave." It is true that
+the passion is more under control, but it is there nevertheless; for in
+one of these letters she ever and anon addresses Abelard as "my greatest
+blessing," and deliberately says: "Under all circumstances, God knows, I
+have feared offending you more than I have feared offending Him; and it
+is you far more than God whom I wish to please; it was a word from you,
+no divine call, that made me take the veil." And she says, in reply to
+Abelard's request to be buried in the cemetery of the Paraclete: "I
+shall be more intent on following you without delay than upon providing
+for your burial."
+
+Bigotry or narrow piety, which are so much alike as to be scarcely
+distinguishable, might find fault with the uncompromising frankness of
+Heloise in confessing the persistence of love after she is a nun. She
+admits that she loved Abelard passionately; moreover: "If I must indeed
+lay bare all the weakness of my miserable heart, I do not find in my
+heart contrition or penitence sufficient to appease God. I cannot
+withhold myself from complaining of His pitiless cruelty in regard to
+the outrage inflicted on you, and I only offend Him by rebellious
+murmurings against His decrees, instead of seeking to allay His wrath by
+repentance. Can it be said, in fact, that one is truly penitent,
+whatever be the bodily penances submitted to, when the soul still
+harbors the thought of sin and burns with the same passions as of old?"
+She cannot bring herself to regret or even to forget and to cease to
+long for the pleasures of their love. "They praise me for purity of
+life; it is only because they do not know of my hypocrisy. The purity of
+the flesh is set down to the credit of virtue; but true virtue is of the
+soul, not of the body." These confessions, it strikes us, are proof of
+the purity and loftiness of her ideals; she will not accept credit for
+virtues that are only skin deep; she honors the robe she wears too much
+to soil it by any sort of indulgence that might give occasion for
+scandal or for irreverent scoffing. But she bravely owns: "I do not seek
+the crown of victory (over my evil thoughts), it is enough for me to
+avoid the danger."
+
+In a person so honest with herself we are not surprised to find a
+charity for the weaknesses of others and a catholicity of view in regard
+to things moral and religious quite in advance of the rather cramped
+asceticism distinctive, for example, of Saint Bernard, whom we take as a
+typical representative of the religious feeling of the age. In the last
+of her letters, she shows her learning, it must be admitted, with a
+little too much pedantry; but that was in accord with the habit of the
+day. She overloads her letter with useless erudition in the way of
+appeals to this and that holy man or this and that text of Scripture to
+support a point which the reader would accept as axiomatic. But behind
+this there is good sense and kindness. She asks Abelard to determine, in
+the rule he is to make for her convent, all sorts of practical points.
+Can women, being physically weaker, fast as rigidly as men? Yet meat is
+not so necessary for women; is it really a deprivation, then, to make
+them abstain from meat? Women are not so prone to intemperance as men,
+and at times they really need some stimulant; how shall we determine in
+regard to wines? We should avoid, of course, male visitors; but do not
+vain, gossiping, worldly women corrupt their own sex just as much as men
+would? Above all, she says, nuns must learn to eschew Pharisaism, the
+better-than-thou frame of mind. "The blessings promised us by Christ
+were not promised to those alone who were priests; woe unto the world,
+indeed, if all that deserved the name of virtue were shut up in a
+cloister."
+
+The close of this last letter is in a tone of religious exaltation which
+but poorly conceals the more human sentiments of the noble Abbess
+Heloise: "It is for thee, O my master, it is for thee, as long as thou
+livest, to institute the rule which we are to follow evermore. For,
+after God, thou wast the founder of our community; it is for thee, then,
+with God's assistance, to legislate for our order."
+
+The two letters in which Abelard answers this request are more coldly
+formal, less personal, than any of the others. At the end, for example,
+instead of some tender reminiscence, some hint that it was at the
+bidding of love that he had poured forth his erudition on the subject of
+the monastic life, we find merely an exhortation such as might be
+addressed by any father confessor to one seeking his direction:
+"Imitate, in the love of study and of good books, those blessed
+disciples of Saint Jerome, Paula and Eustochia, at whose request this
+great doctor wrote so many works that are a guiding light to the
+church."
+
+What were the rules by which Heloise and her nuns were to live? In
+essence not fundamentally different from those in use in regular
+monasteries of the Benedictine rule, they are yet of sufficient interest
+to warrant us in giving a brief account, a mere abstract, of the very
+lengthy and verbose commentary on monasticism which Heloise received
+from Abelard. We cannot doubt that a person of her intelligence and
+strength of character followed the spirit, not the letter, of the law,
+and made her nuns live as she lived, beyond the utmost reach of evil
+report.
+
+The three cardinal virtues in the view of monasticism are Chastity,
+Poverty, Silence. These the nuns must observe most strictly, and such
+observance involves the renunciation of all family ties, of all worldly
+affections and desires. As there is less of temptation to worldliness in
+the solitary places of the earth, the convent should be remote. The
+absurd extent to which the cult of mere chastity was exalted in the
+mediaeval mind has been commented on by many a writer; but one little
+incident or illustration from the book by which Heloise was to govern
+herself and her community may be forgiven us. Abelard quotes from a
+letter of Saint Jerome. In the life of Saint Martin, written by
+Sulpicius, we read that the saint wished to pay his respects to a virgin
+renowned for her exemplary conduct and her chastity, who, it seems, had
+spent all her life since girlhood shut up in a small cell. She refused
+to allow Saint Martin to come into her dwelling, but, looking out of the
+crevice which served for a window, she said: "Father, pray where you
+are, for I have never received a visit from any man." Saint Martin "gave
+thanks to God that, thanks to such a mode of life, she had preserved her
+chastity." The humor, the irony, of such a remark appeals to us; but it
+never occurred to Saint Martin, to Saint Jerome, to Abelard, or to
+Heloise, that she who had continued chaste merely because she had
+bottled herself up in a living tomb did not merit praise for any
+extraordinary virtue: one might as well praise Robinson Crusoe on his
+island for not indulging in the dissipations of society.
+
+To continue the rules for the Paraclete, which was certainly situated in
+a place remote enough to protect its inmates from worldly intrusions, we
+may add that the rule advises that the grounds or inclosure of the
+convent should contain "all that is needful for the life of the convent,
+that is to say, a garden, water, a mill, a bolting house and a bakery
+oven," in short, everything that can be thought of, in order to obviate
+the necessity of communication with the outside world.
+
+Heloise's monastery, we may be assured, did not want for a diligent
+abbess, who was to be assisted by six subordinates: "For the entire
+administration of the convent we believe that there ought to be seven
+mistresses, so many and no more: the porteress, the cellaress, the
+vesturess (_robaria_), the infirmaress, the precentress (_cantaria_),
+the sacristan, and finally a deaconess, called now an abbess.... In this
+camp of Heaven's militia... the deaconess takes the place of the
+general-in-chief, to whom all are in all things obedient." The six other
+sisters called officers, who command under her, rank as colonels or
+captains. The rest of the nuns belonging regularly to the order are the
+soldiers of the Lord, while the lay sisters, who were employed in menial
+offices and were not initiated into the order, but merely took vows
+renouncing the world, were to be the foot soldiers.
+
+Heloise would accord quite well with the requirements for an abbess or
+deaconess. Such a one must have learning sufficient to read and to
+comprehend the Scriptures and the rules of her order. She must be
+dignified, able to command respect and obedience. "Only as a last resort
+and for pressing reasons should women of high rank or of great fortune
+be chosen as abbesses." Full of the importance of their titles, they are
+ordinarily vain, presumptuous, proud. Being the guardian of the whole
+community, the abbess should keep a close watch over her own conduct,
+lest she corrupt by evil example. Above all, the abbess is forbidden to
+"live in greater comfort, greater ease, than any of her nuns. She shall
+not have any private apartments for dining or sleeping; she shall share
+all with her flock, whose needs she will comprehend so much the better."
+When guests are to be entertained at table the abbess is not to make
+this an excuse for providing delicacies on which she herself may feast,
+the guest is to sit at the table with the other nuns, though a special
+dish may be provided for her, and the abbess herself is to wait on her,
+and afterward to eat with the servants. According to a maxim of Saint
+Anthony, as fish that are kept long out of water die, even so monks who
+live long out of their cells in communication with worldly folk break
+their vow of seclusion. We may recall that Chaucer's jolly monk held
+this same text "not worth an oyster"; but the abbess of the Paraclete is
+specially enjoined "never to leave the convent to attend to outside
+business." This reminds us that it was provided that the Paraclete
+should have a certain number of monks attached to it. Convents, indeed,
+were rarely if ever independent of masculine supervision, if not
+control, and in this case it is specially provided that the convent
+"shall be subject always to a monastery, in such sort that one abbot may
+preside, and... that there be but one fold and one shepherd." The
+relations, however, are decidedly to the advantage of the nuns; their
+subjection is only nominal, and every provision is made, in the letter
+of the law, that the monks shall attend merely to things outside of the
+convent and shall not meddle with its administration: "If we wish that
+the abbot... should have control over the nuns, it is only in such sort
+that he shall recognize as his superiors the spouses of Christ, whose
+servant only he is, and that he shall find pleasure in serving, not in
+commanding them. He should be like the intendant of a royal household,
+who does not venture to make his mistress feel his power.... He or his
+representatives shall never be at liberty to speak to the virgins of the
+Lord in the absence of their abbess.... He shall decide nothing
+concerning them or their affairs until he has taken counsel with her;
+and he shall transmit his instructions or orders only through her....
+All that concerns costume, food, even money, if there be any, shall be
+gathered together and put in the custody of the nuns; out of their
+superfluity they shall provide what is needful for the monks. The monks,
+therefore, shall take charge of all outside affairs, and the nuns of all
+those things which it becomes women to attend to in the house, to wit,
+to sew the frocks of the monks, to wash them, to knead the bread, to put
+it in the oven and bake it. They shall have charge of the dairy and its
+dependencies; they shall feed the hens and geese; in short, they shall
+do all that women can do better than men.... Men and women both shall
+vow obedience to the abbess."
+
+Though not so radical in some respects as the constitution which Robert
+D'Arbrissel imposed upon his monastery of Fontevrault, where women were
+exalted above men in all respects, the provisions cited above seem
+sufficient to insure the independence of the nuns. There are, of course,
+careful rules to safeguard the virtue of both monks and nuns in the
+close relations necessitated by the conventual scheme; but as these are
+not different from what ordinary prudence would suggest--and ordinary
+craft circumvent--we need not pause to give them.
+
+The deaconess or abbess was not absolute; she must take counsel with her
+subordinates, and for some things she must convene the whole convent to
+ask advice and consent. Her subordinates had duties and responsibilities
+of no mean sort. The sacristan, who is also treasurer, shall have charge
+of the chapel and its ornaments, their repairs, etc. She must care for
+the things needful for the services of the church, such as the incense,
+the relics, the bells, and the communion wafers, which latter the nuns
+are to make of pure wheat flour. The sacristan, too, having to decorate
+the church in keeping with the seasons of the religious year, must be
+enough of a scholar to know how to compute and determine the feast days
+according to the calendar.
+
+With the precentress, or mistress of the choir, rested the
+responsibility for the church music. She was to train the choir, and to
+teach music, in which she must be well versed. Besides this, she was the
+librarian, must give out and take in the books, and take care of books
+and illuminations. In case of the illness or other incapacity of the
+abbess, the precentress took her place.
+
+One of the most trying places must have been that of infirmaress, who
+not only had charge of the sick in the capacity of nurse, but "must keep
+herself supplied with proper medicines, according to the resources of
+the place, and this she can do the better if she knows a little of
+medicine.... She must know how to let blood (the medicine of the period
+relied very largely upon phlebotomy), so that this operation may not
+require the access of any man among the nuns." Much of the simpler
+knowledge and practice of medicine was permitted to women; the simpler
+medicine, indeed, was the only hope of the unfortunate sick in the days
+of drastic doctoring.
+
+The nun called the _robaria_, who had charge of the wardrobe, we have
+christened "vesturess," for lack of a better name. She provided and
+cared for the clothing of both monks and nuns, not so simple a matter as
+it might seem, for "she shall have the sheep sheared, and shall receive
+the leather (for shoes, etc.); she shall collect and take care of the
+wool and linen and see to the making of the cloth from them; she shall
+distribute thread, needles, and scissors (to the nuns assigned to work
+under her). She shall have charge of the dormitory and of the beds; and
+she shall be charged with directing the cutting, sewing, and washing of
+the table-cloths, napkins, and all the linen of the monastery.... She
+shall have all the necessary implements for her work, and shall regulate
+the tasks assigned to each sister. She shall have charge of the novices
+until they are admitted to the community." The novices, by the way, were
+regularly taught in the convent, and a good deal of the work for which
+religious exercises left the nuns little time was assigned to them.
+
+The clothes worn by the nuns of Heloise's convent were to be of the
+simplest kind. "The clothes shall be of black woollen stuff; no other
+color, for that best accords with the mourning of penitence; and no fur
+is more fitting than the fleece of lambs for the spouses of Christ...."
+And this black robe was not to extend lower than the heel ("to avoid
+raising the dust"), or to have sleeves longer than the natural length to
+cover arm and hand,--a provision which one can understand only after
+seeing pictures of the immense sleeves in fashion. "The veils shall not
+be of silk, but of cloth or dyed stuff. They shall wear chemises of
+cloth next the skin, and these they shall not take off even to sleep.
+Considering the delicacy of their constitutions, we will not forbid the
+use of mattresses and sheets.... For covering (at night), we think a
+chemise, a robe and a lamb skin, adding over these, during the cold
+weather, a mantle for covering to the bed, will suffice. Each bed must
+have a mattress, a bolster, a pillow, a counterpane, and a sheet." In
+order to guard against vermin and dirt, all clothing should be provided
+for each nun in double sets. On their heads the nuns were to wear a
+white band with the veil over it; when necessary, on account of the
+tonsure, a bonnet of lamb skin might be worn. When a nun died, she was
+dressed in clean but coarse garments, with sandals on her feet, and the
+garments sewn or fastened to the body, so that they might not be
+disarranged in the presence of the priests officiating at her funeral.
+As a special honor, the abbess could be buried in a garment of
+haircloth, sewn around her like a sack.
+
+The duties of the porteress were sufficiently simple, consisting chiefly
+in guarding the gate and admitting only persons properly accredited. But
+the cellaress had duties manifold. She "shall have charge of all that
+concerns the feeding of the nuns: cellar, refectory, kitchen, mill,
+bakery, bake ovens, gardens, orchards and fields, beehives, flocks,
+cattle of all kinds, and poultry." With keen insight into human nature,
+it is especially provided that she shall not reserve any tidbits for
+herself at the table, with the admonition that this was precisely what
+Judas did.
+
+We have given but the merest sketch of the provisions by which Heloise
+was to regulate her life. The rule determines points great and small;
+meat can be allowed three times a week, except during Lent; wine may be
+used in moderation; services must be held at such and such times, with
+work or sleep between; nuns must never go bare-footed, nor gossip with
+visitors, and so on. But one thing we must add, as illustrative of the
+manners of the time: "There is one thing more which must be not only
+forbidden but held in abhorrence, although it is a custom in use in most
+monasteries: that is that the nuns should wipe their hands or their
+knives with the pieces of bread remaining from dinner, which are the
+portion of the poor. To save table linen it is not right to soil the
+bread of the poor."
+
+In the way of actual facts little is really known of the life of
+Heloise. We have sought to trace the fortunes of the man to whom she was
+so unselfishly yet so passionately attached and to reproduce from her
+own scanty writings as much as may be of her character. We must now
+conclude the story of Abelard. After his departure from Saint-Gildas his
+days were still full of trouble. In 1136 we find him once more
+triumphing in his old field, delivering his lectures to crowds of
+students upon Mont Sainte-Genevieve. Not only did his teaching draw
+crowds, but his book on theology was in every hand, and his doctrines
+spread beyond the Alps. In the words of one of his enemies, writing to
+Saint Bernard: _Libri ejus transeunt maria, transvolant Alpes_: "His
+books are wafted across the seas, and fly over the Alps." Arnold of
+Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, was preaching in Italy a more democratic
+religion and a more liberal form of government, stirring up the wrath of
+the Church as another Tribune of the People daring to incite the Italian
+cities to proclaim their freedom. The final conflict of Abelard's life
+was preparing.
+
+At Clairvaux, in a valley so dismal as to have won the name of the
+_Valley of Wormwood_, lived the very incarnation of asceticism, stern
+religious orthodoxy, and uncompromising conservatism--Saint Bernard. To
+him, a restless, daring innovator like Abelard was abhorrent. To profess
+doctrines that led to the view that original sin was less a sin than a
+punishment, that the redemption of man was an act of pure love, not one
+of necessity for our redemption, that God, in short, was a God of Love,
+not a God of Wrath--what was all this but striking at the very root of
+that exquisite mortification of the flesh, the prayers, the fasting, the
+actual corporeal torment inflicted upon himself by Saint Bernard in the
+hope of purchasing remission of his sin? His sin, we may remark,
+consisted merely in being descended from Adam, for he had been pure in
+life from his youth up. Saint Bernard was looked upon even in his own
+life as almost a saint; his influence was tremendous. He now began to
+stir up the powers of the Church, from the Pope down, against Abelard.
+The latter, puffed up with pride at his renewed success, or perhaps
+willing to risk all at one throw, did not wait for the Church to proceed
+against him: he challenged his enemies to prove his doctrines heretical;
+he challenged Bernard himself to meet him in debate before a council
+that was to meet at Sens in 1140. Fully aware of his inferiority as a
+logician to this trained thinker, Saint Bernard reluctantly consented to
+take up the battle for orthodoxy. All was ready; Abelard appeared before
+the council, realized that his case was prejudged, and appealed to Rome.
+Nevertheless, Saint Bernard got the council to pass judgment against
+Abelard and to sentence him to silence and to perpetual reclusion in a
+monastery, and Innocent II., the next year, confirmed the finding of the
+council. Broken in spirit, Abelard nevertheless set out for Rome to urge
+his plea in person, but at Cluni he broke down in health. Tenderly cared
+for by the good abbot, Peter the Venerable, who effected a sort of
+reconciliation between Abelard and the triumphant Abbot of Clairvaux,
+Abelard lingered but a few months. To ease his dying days Peter the
+Venerable had him removed to the little priory of Saint Marcel, a
+dependency of Cluni, where he died, April 21, 1142.
+
+In accordance with the wishes of Heloise and of Abelard himself, Peter
+the Venerable sent his remains secretly to the Paraclete, writing to
+Heloise: "May the Lord keep him for you, to give him back to you through
+His mercy." There was a heart still in the breast of this old monk; we
+trust that his prayer has been answered, even as we trust that the
+absolution which he sent at Heloise's request has washed away the sins
+of her lover: "I, Peter, Abbot of Cluni, who received into the monastery
+of Cluni Peter Abelard, and granted that his body be borne secretly to
+the Abbess Heloise and the convent of the Paraclete, by the authority of
+God Almighty and of all the saints, absolve him, by virtue of my office,
+from all his sins."
+
+We hear nothing more of Heloise, except that she provided for her child,
+left with Abelard's sister in Brittany; but we know that she lived her
+life not only bravely, but honorably. For twenty-two years more she
+lived on at the convent over which her husband had established her, and
+here she died, on the 16th of May, 1164. Her body was buried beside that
+of her husband in the cemetery of the Paraclete, and a touching legend
+relates that when, according to the order given by herself, her body was
+deposited in the tomb of her husband, "Abelard stretched out his arms to
+receive her and closed them in a last embrace." Through all the
+centuries love has guarded their remains; though often shifted, their
+resting place is still known: in the famous Cimetiere de L'Est, Pere
+Lachaise, at Paris, the traveller still sees the tomb of Abelard and
+Heloise.
+
+It is not her learning that has made Heloise famous; it is the accident
+of her connection with Abelard which has served to keep her name alive.
+It is not because she was learned or because she was loved by Abelard
+that we admire her. Her greatness is a moral greatness rare in her time,
+and not due to her intellect or to the tragic circumstances of her life.
+The remarkable thing is that, overwhelmed in the ruin of her lover,
+forced into a convent at twenty, where she obeys him and imitates him,
+she yet does not change in her heart, she does not suffer the mystic
+death of the cloister; of her love she never repents, though she does
+repent of her faults; to the law of monastic asceticism her conscience
+refuses to submit, let Abelard preach as he will, for she vaguely feels
+that asceticism is in violation of some higher law of life. The great
+love in her heart knew no faltering; so much like devotion was it that
+one feels that she meant no name but that of Abelard to be associated
+with the words of a dirge attributed to her:
+
+        "With thee I suffered the rigor of destiny;
+        With thee shall I, weary, sleep;
+        With thee shall I enter Sion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WOMEN IN EARLY PROVENCAL AND FRENCH LITERATURE
+
+GUILHELM--or William--X., Duke of Aquitaine, remorseful because of the
+ravages committed in Normandy by himself and his allies in 1136, started
+on an expiatory pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint-James of Compostella.
+Before going he willed to Louis the Fat, King of France, the
+guardianship of his daughter, "la tres noble demoiselle Eleonore," sole
+heiress of his extensive dominions, including Poitou, Marche, the
+Limousin, Auvergne, Gascony, and Guienne. This Eleanor was to be the
+brilliant and passionate Queen of England, mother of Richard of the Lion
+Heart and of John Lackland. But we will not anticipate her story, for
+sixteen years of her life precede the time when she became the queen of
+Henry II.
+
+The youthful heiress had been left as the feudal ward of King Louis, who
+lost no time in securing her domain for the crown of France. Duke
+Guilhelm died in the church of Compostella April 9, 1137-1138. Eleanor,
+now Duchess of Aquitaine, was but sixteen years of age, but she was not
+long to remain unmarried. Prince Louis of France, accompanied by a
+gorgeous company of five hundred knights, under command of the Count
+Palatine, Thibaud de Champagne, came as her suitor,--a suitor whom she
+could not refuse. She was married, and crowned as future Queen of
+France. On their way back from Bordeaux to Paris the young couple met
+the news of the death of Louis the Fat. Eleanor was thus Queen of France
+indeed, but there was more of the south, of Toulouse and Bordeaux and
+the troubadours in her nature than was quite good for one who was the
+wife of the correct, devout, narrow-minded, though not stupid or unkind
+Louis VII.
+
+She came of a race notorious for reckless love of pleasure, for
+sparkling wit, for vehemence of temper and strong passions, for utter
+disregard of the merely decorous, the sober commonplace rules of either
+morals or society. We have seen some of the pranks of her grandfather,
+William of Poitou. Her father was not less high-tempered, though less
+brilliant than his troubadour predecessor. His fits of extravagance were
+followed by fits of penitence in whose sincerity one may place some
+faith, whereas the troubadour was certainly never sad for long, and
+apparently not much imbued with religious ardor, even if he did go to
+the Holy Land as a pious crusader. Eleanor inherited her grandfather's
+temper and his love of literature, music, fighting, and all that made
+life worth living, according to the standards of her native land. Let us
+look at this land of the troubadours, from which Eleanor came, and try
+to picture the environment to which she was accustomed and which she
+abandoned to live with the sober, monkish, unlovely French king, whose
+court and whose city of Paris did not compare with the gay capital of
+Bordeaux, where her father and her grandfather had gathered the most
+brilliant poets and musicians of Provence.
+
+While the northern and western portions of France, including even that
+muddy _Lutetia Parisorum_ which has become the modern Paris, were for
+but a short time, comparatively, under Roman rule, there was a portion
+of France, between the Rhone and the Swiss Alps, which was so
+distinctively and peculiarly a part of the great empire that it was
+called _Provincia_, "the Province," or, as we know it, Provence. It was
+in this beautiful land, the French Riviera, that the Roman legions
+established their first posts, long before there was a Roman Empire.
+Here they found a civilization ready to their hands, for in the centre
+of their new Provincia was the famous port of
+Massillia--Marseilles--established long before by Greeks and
+Phoenicians. To the present day one finds at Aries, at Mimes, at
+Avignon, titanic ruins bearing witness to the Roman civilization. It was
+a fertile country, glowing with rich fruits and flowers, and favored
+with a climate which has made it famous since the days of Rome. While
+the north of France was hopelessly barbarized by Teutonic inroads and
+long years of barbaric warfare, the civilization of Provence was rather
+checked than destroyed. Marseilles was still a port, and the commerce of
+the east, of the Mediterranean, of Rome, came through Marseilles, not
+only for Gaul but for Britain. The influence of this constant
+intercourse, no less than the large infusion of Latin or Hellenic blood,
+kept the people of Provence from relapsing into the primitive state of
+the people further to the north. They were, moreover, a gay and
+pleasure-loving people by nature, and probably always less savage and
+rough than the Franks. We may remember that even at the beginning of our
+story the court of the pious King Robert, according to the monkish
+chronicles, was hopelessly corrupted by the attendants of his Provencal
+bride, Constance, with their scandalously fashioned costumes and their
+ungodly minstrelsy. The rich clothing, the minstrelsy, the more gracious
+manners, were always characteristic of the southerners, from the very
+first moment we hear of them until the end.
+
+During the eleventh century, while the kingdom of France was just
+beginning to gain something like an ascendancy over the other provinces
+which were eventually to constitute a real power under one rule, the
+riches and the power of the Mediterranean district came to full flower.
+We speak of this whole territory as Provence, although in reality
+Provence proper was but a small portion of the whole. It would be,
+perhaps, better to confine one's self to the old distinction between
+north and south France, based on the difference in dialect. Dante,
+distinguishing between three groups of the tongues derived from Latin,
+says: _Alii Oc, alii Oil, alii Si, affirmando loquuntur:_--"For the
+affirmative, some use Oc (Provencal) some use Oil (French), some use Si
+(Italian)." The langue d'oc was the tongue used in that part of France
+south of a line drawn from the south of the Garonne to the Alps,
+including not only Provence but Guienne, Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne,
+etc. The people and the language, however, throughout this whole
+territory, were generally named from that Provincia which, as we have
+said, was the most fertile and the most favored. Thus, in ordinary
+speech, a citizen of Beziers, Toulouse, or even Bordeaux was as much a
+Provencal as one from Aries or Aix.
+
+Among the other influences to which Provence owed part of its culture
+one must not forget that of Spain. At the time of which we write a large
+part of the richest lands in Spain was in the possession of a race more
+cultured, more intellectual, more refined, despite their warlike nature,
+than any race with which western Europe had yet come in contact. The
+story of the Saracen empire in Spain, its rise, its glorious struggle,
+its almost fabulous luxury, and its pathetic fall, is one of the most
+fascinating in history. Arab songs, Arab singers, Arab instruments
+became known among the Spaniards, and even in the face of continual
+warfare some little of infidel arts and sciences and refinements
+penetrated and softened the rougher-mannered civilization of the
+Christians.
+
+On Spain itself this Oriental influence was, of course, strongest; but
+the relations between Spain and the south of France were at all times
+close, and the relations between Provence and Spain were made still more
+intimate when, in the early part of the twelfth century, the crown of
+Provence passed to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, who had married
+Douce de Provence.
+
+Under these influences the nobility of Provence developed a culture
+perhaps purely artificial and exotic, but certainly far in advance of
+that prevailing in any other part of France. With their civilization
+came, of course, a knowledge of the gentler arts and a feeling for the
+beautiful. At a time when French literature consisted of a few fragments
+of documents, chronicles, or dull legends of the saints, Provence had
+developed a literature of most astonishing richness and delicacy. The
+surprising thing about this literature of Provence is that it has no
+beginnings, no childhood, but is almost as perfect in artistic finish,
+in the careful handling of most intricate rhymes and stanzas, when the
+first troubadour sings as it became during the two hundred years of its
+life. There were songs or poems in stanzas of varying structure and
+lines of varying length, some really lyric, and some epic. The most
+distinctive forms of the lyric poetry were probably the dirge or
+_planh_; the contention or _tenson_, a poem in which two or more persons
+maintain an argument on questions of love, or chivalry, etc., each using
+stanzas terminating in similar rhymes, somewhat like the style of poem
+long after known in Scottish literature as a "flyting;" and the satiric
+poem or pasquinade, the _sirvente_, often a fierce war song in which the
+poet lashed his foes and urged his men on to battle.
+
+The social conditions of France during this period were such as to make
+caste distinctions very marked. That a _roturier_, a plain peasant, or
+even a tradesman, should become the social equal of a noble was a thing
+unheard of. But in Provence--curiously enough when one remembers the
+excessive refinement of luxury encouraged in this land of flowers--the
+society was much more democratic. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
+say that among a people who had already discovered that literature and
+music were arts the artist was welcomed, talent was recognized and
+rewarded, no matter in what class it was found. Yet the troubadours as a
+class belong to the nobility. That this was almost necessarily so one
+can easily understand, for the troubadour was expected to live a life of
+gay extravagance in his own chateau and to travel about the country
+during favoring weather, accompanied by a little band of retainers who
+must be trained musicians, and who at the castles they visited sang or
+performed pieces of their master's composing.
+
+We can imagine what a flutter there must have been in the breasts of the
+ladies, always the prime object of the troubadour's songs, when the gay
+cavalcade approached, heralded by the song of the _jongleurs_: "We come,
+bringing a precious balsam which cures all sorts of ills, and heals the
+troubles both of body and mind. It is contained in a vase of gold,
+adorned with jewels, the most rare. Even to see it is wonderful
+pleasure, as you will find if you care to try. The balsam is the music
+of our master, the vase of gold is our courtly company. Would you have
+the vase open, and disclose its ineffable treasure?"
+
+The troubadour himself must go in knightly panoply, and he and his
+musicians or jongleurs were usually provided with rich clothing. Gifts,
+of course, might be accepted from a sovereign, but no pecuniary
+recompense; the knightly minstrel disdained to sing for hire; it was
+pure love of his art that inspired him, and the idea of making it a
+lucrative profession never occurred to him. The troubadour, therefore,
+had to live upon his patrimony--until he squandered it in riotous
+living--and only a gentleman could afford to do that. Of the scores of
+troubadours whose names are known to us, the great majority are nobles,
+though not always belonging to the higher nobility; but the artist, the
+musician who "found" enchanting melodies, was almost _ex officio_ a
+knight, a chevalier, the terms troubadour and chevalier being
+interchangeable, and knighthood was considered so essential that one of
+the well-known troubadours was accused of having conferred the dignity
+upon himself, since no one else would knight him. Among the number of
+the troubadours one can count a score or more of reigning princes,
+"counts and dukes by the dozen,... many princes of royal blood, and
+finally four kings." Yet beside the royal troubadour, and associated
+with him in a perfect freemasonry of art, one finds the troubadour of
+humble birth. Bertrand de Born, the petty baron, was on terms of perfect
+equality with the sons of Henry II.: Geoffrey, he called by the nickname
+of _Rassa_, Henry was _Marinier_, and Richard was _Richard Oc e No_
+(Richard Yea and Nay). Pierre Vidal, the most eccentric of all the
+_genus irritabile_, was the son of a furrier of Toulouse, and yet, being
+a poet, was the friend of princes, notably of Alphonso, the troubadour
+king of Arragon. Bernard de Ventadour, who ventured, unrebuked, to send
+love songs to haughty Queen Eleanor, was the son of the baker of the
+chateau de Ventadour. There was, therefore, much greater freedom of
+intercourse in Provence than in the north of France, where feudalism had
+taken deeper root, where the warrior was merely a hard hitter, not a
+musician who went about equally prepared to fight or to sing.
+
+The grace and polish of Provencal society was, of course, only relative.
+At best, it was merely a surface polish in many cases; and to us the
+manners of the troubadours might seem as coarse as their morals were
+corrupt. The very extravagance of the troubadour's life, with its
+constant demands for large expenditure in travel or in fantastic
+entertainments and revels at his chateau, the persistent thirst for
+excitement and pleasure in themselves would have been sufficient to
+foster licentious habits. Prodigality reduced many a troubadour to the
+rank of a mere jongleur or hired musician. A mediaeval moralist remarks,
+for the benefit of _la cigale_,--who probably paid no attention
+whatever, but went on singing,--_Homo joculatoribus intentus cito
+habebit uxorem cut nomen erit paupertas, ex qua generabitur filius cui
+nomen erit derisio_ (He who devotes himself to minstrelsy will soon have
+a wife named Poverty, of whom will be born a son named Ignominy.) But
+whether or not the troubadour made a sinful waste of his fortune, his
+one business in life was understood to be making love.
+
+Every troubadour chose some lady to whom he devoted his talents, seeking
+to make her
+
+        "Glorious by his pen, and famous by his sword."
+
+Like a true knight-errant of music and poetry, he travelled over the
+land, singing the praises of his lady-love and upholding the superiority
+of her charms in the lists, in battles with the infidel, or in any
+chance adventure on the road. After enduring in her honor whatever
+fortune might send him, and singing to her in songs of triumph or in
+plaintive love songs, he would return to claim his reward. So far, all
+is romantic and innocent enough. One can indulge in lovely sentimental
+fancies concerning this world of gentle singers and fair ladies and
+poesy and sunshine. But in sober fact the loves of the troubadours were
+neither so romantic nor even so innocent as one would gladly think. In a
+certain class of modern novels, the hero rarely experiences a _grande
+passion_, as it is charitably called, except for some other man's wife;
+so the lady to whom the troubadour devotes himself, to whom he pours out
+his passion with all the cunning and warmth that art can devise, and of
+whose favors he sometimes most ungallantly boasts, is almost invariably
+a married woman. Fortunately, despite the fact that poets are given to
+proclaiming that truth and poetry are almost synonyms, most of us do not
+take them _au pied de la lettre_. "Most loving is feigning," says a good
+authority, and certainly most of the protestations in erotic poetry are
+hardly to be taken at their face value. So we may safely assume that the
+intercourse between the troubadours and the ladies to whom their songs
+are dedicated was generally quite innocent; and the burning desire, the
+tragic despair, or the exultant passion, of the poems was also largely
+figurative, mere squibs and crackers of love. Certainly, if it were
+otherwise, the husbands of Provence were most unselfish patrons of art.
+
+Yet, making all the allowances that common sense or charity may warrant,
+we have to admit that there is only too much evidence of deplorable
+moral laxity in the days of the troubadours. The very first troubadour
+of note, Count William of Poitou, Eleanor's grandfather, was notorious
+for his contemptuous attitude toward the Church and for his
+licentiousness. In fact, the poems of William are coarse and almost
+brutal in their tone, utterly lacking in the superfine gallantry, the
+preciosity, which is characteristic of the love poetry of his troubadour
+successors. There is in the poems a sort of bold laughter and wit, and
+the technical part of the work shows a most surprising artistic finish,
+but nothing that speaks of chivalrous ideals. It is with some wonder,
+therefore, that we read in the old Provencal biography of this first of
+the troubadours that "the Count of Poitou was one of the most courteous
+men in the world, and a great deceiver of ladies; and he was a brave
+knight and had much to do with love affairs; and he knew well how to
+sing and make verses; and for a long time he roamed all through the land
+to deceive the ladies." According to all accounts, William was very
+successful in this gallant undertaking. It was the troubadour's
+business, openly avowed, to "deceive the ladies," and among a people so
+susceptible as those of Provence many must have been the domestic
+tragedies brought on by these erotic knights-errant.
+
+When love making, or the writing of love songs, becomes a profession one
+need not be surprised to find that there is a great deal of pure
+conventionality. The love of beauty is not supreme in all hearts, even
+in those of poets, and so the love poetry of the troubadours is as
+artificial, as overstrained and oversweetened as a panegyric of an
+Elizabethan poet upon that very questionable beauty of the "vestal
+throned in the west." What was the actual standard of beauty among the
+ladies of Provence is hard to determine, for they are all much the same
+in the songs of the troubadours. The lady has skin whiter than milk,
+purer than the driven snow, of tint more delicate than the pearl. Upon
+her cheeks the roses vie with the lilies, the delicate color mounting at
+the sound of her praises and melting away in danger or distress. A
+wealth of flaxen hair, of silky texture, crowns her head, and a pair of
+soft blue eyes gaze languishingly upon the lover; and when they close,
+the sun is gone from the face of nature, so dark does the world seem to
+him. But when she walks abroad in smiling beauty, the very birds stop
+their own love making to chant of her loveliness, and the flowers turn
+to look at her. With all this delicacy of physical beauty goes a
+constitution as delicate, for she faints at the news of disaster or
+danger to her troubadour. When the monkish chroniclers are so very cold
+in their descriptions of personal charms, we are left to the poets. It
+may be, then, that, in troubadour eyes at least, Eleanor herself was of
+the type we have described.
+
+It was from a society formed of such elements, and from the very home of
+music and poetry, that the young Queen of France came to Paris, at that
+time no doubt a very dismal place, inhabited by people who, however
+superior as Christians, must have seemed to her uncultured barbarians.
+The details of her life during the first ten or fifteen years after her
+marriage are obscure, and certainly of little historic interest. We can
+feel sure only that her union with Louis VII. must have been distinctly
+and increasingly irksome to both parties. With the best will in the
+world, historians can say no more of him than that he was a safe and
+conservative ruler, never achieving any marked success, and yet never
+incurring serious disaster. As a man he was cold, personally
+unattractive and unsympathetic, possessed of unquestioned physical
+courage, and yet at times fatally timid and irresolute; easily
+influenced,' especially by the one power which one might fancy most
+distasteful to Eleanor, the Church, for he was devout to the point of
+superstition. If Eleanor had been a mere sybarite, a nerveless devotee
+of pleasure, she might have lived in obscurity and borne with the
+puritanism of her husband. But her blood was too hot for that; she was
+full of ambition and of energy and relentless determination to realize
+that ambition. As Queen of France there was no great role for her to
+play. She was young, and for the moment Louis and his counsellors
+governed France, while she was satisfied with less ambitious
+occupations. One of these occupations was, no doubt, keeping up her
+connection with the troubadours of her native land, with whom her family
+and her ducal court of Bordeaux were traditionally associated. The exact
+dates of her friendship with various troubadours we do not, of course,
+know; but we do know that she made rather frequent trips to her beloved
+Bordeaux during these years, and that she was commonly recognized as a
+patroness of the troubadours.
+
+We next hear of Eleanor in a role not altogether in keeping with her
+troubadour affiliations: one does not think of the daughter of William
+of Poitou as a defender of the Cross, yet it is as a crusader that
+Eleanor first makes a stir in history. Much has been made by historians
+of the influence of the Crusades; here we are concerned to remark only
+that the spirit of adventure spread even to the women, and that many a
+dame went to the Holy Land, some even in panoply of war. It was a
+wonderful step forward in the freedom of women, if we recall the
+conditions existing a generation before. Our great Provencal queen was a
+typical representative, not only of the chivalry and love of adventure
+of Provence, but of the spirit of greater independence prevailing among
+women. When her grave and devout husband began his preparations for the
+Second Crusade, in 1147, Eleanor determined to accompany him.
+
+A woman of her energy could not, of course, be content with the
+_faineant_ role of spouse and consoler. Accordingly, she organized a
+regular band of Amazons among the great ladies of France, including the
+Countesses of Toulouse and Flanders and other noble dames. The costume
+of this troop was the most notable thing about them. The gay and
+extravagant queen had devoted much time and thought to the devising of a
+dress sufficiently showy for herself and her ladies, and, according to
+the accounts of the chronicler William of Tyre, to whom we are indebted
+for most of the details of her crusading exploits, Eleanor and her
+companions presented a gorgeous spectacle. Accompanied by bands of
+troubadours and musicians, with much flaunting of gay banners and
+glittering of spangles, Queen Eleanor, clad man-fashion, in glittering
+spangle armor, and her ladies rode in the van of the army. Their
+discarded distaffs these martial ladies sent to recreant knights who had
+preferred staying at home to crusading.
+
+The saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, the most powerful religious influence
+of his time, one whose inspired preaching could move vast audiences to a
+perfect frenzy of religious exaltation, had been induced, almost
+compelled, to preach the crusade for that loyal son of the Church, Louis
+VII. Saint Bernard himself confessed to serious misgivings about the
+righteousness of this crusade, and would not be a second Peter the
+Hermit to lead the vast host of the Cross. One can imagine that the
+doings of Louis's queen must have filled the soul of Saint Bernard with
+misgivings still more serious. Eleanor, indeed, was incapable of
+religious feeling of sufficient depth to sympathize with the purer
+motives of fanaticism that inspired the best of the crusaders. For her
+it was a pleasure jaunt, a glorious opportunity to enjoy all the pomp
+and circumstance of being a queen, and at least the show of power.
+Louis, perhaps, would have been glad to leave his rather too theatrical
+and frivolous consort behind, for the crusade was to him a serious
+business; but it is likely that the large contingent of Gascons and
+Poitevins, devoted to their troubadour duchess, were hardly so eager
+about following the King of France.
+
+The crusade, whose history we need not dwell upon, was like a triumphal
+procession as far as Constantinople. To be sure, there were misery and
+sickness and death among the hordes of poor camp followers and pilgrims
+who had sought the protection of the great army as they journeyed to
+that Holy Land whose mere sight, they fancied, would be as a balm to
+their seared consciences; but Queen Eleanor and her princesses
+experienced nothing but the vain excitement of it all, the wonders of
+the Greek civilization, the glitter and splendor. Warned by the
+disastrous experience of the Germans who had preceded him, Louis elected
+to follow the coast route along the shores of Asia Minor, and he and his
+army were safely transported across the straits by the Greeks.
+
+In the march that followed, the vain and headstrong Eleanor more than
+once jeopardized herself and the whole army. She insisted on leading the
+van, and her too complaisant husband consented. The result was that
+Eleanor, with utter disregard of strategy and of ordinary military
+precautions, conducted her forces as if the expedition were merely a
+party of pleasure, selected her camps and her route according to the
+beauty of the landscape, and all the time flirted in the most
+irresponsible fashion with anyone who attracted her. It was said that
+she had a most shameful intrigue with a handsome young emir, accepted
+gifts from Sultan Noureddin, and spoke of her husband with increasing
+flippancy, disrespect, contempt. The army was saved in the mountain
+passes by a knight from Eleanor's native land, one Gilbert, of whom
+really nothing is known, but who has been made the central figure in a
+romance in which Eleanor also plays her part.
+
+From Satalia, on the Gulf of Cyprus, the king and Eleanor, with the more
+well to do among their followers, took ship for Antioch, abandoning the
+mass of poor followers to the mercies of the perfidious Greeks and the
+fierce Turks. In Antioch, Eleanor was received too kindly by her uncle,
+Raymond, Prince of Antioch, said to have been the handsomest man of his
+time, and as licentious as Eleanor's own grandfather had been. Despite
+their relationship, Eleanor's conduct with Raymond made Louis wildly
+jealous. She was already talking of a separation from Louis. The
+daughter of William of Poitou certainly could not, as she proclaimed,
+put up with a monk for her husband; but it is rather amazing to find her
+pretending that she wishes her marriage dissolved for reasons of
+conscience, since she and her husband are related within the degrees
+prohibited by that Church of which she has always been so devout a
+daughter. Louis carried her off, willy-nilly, from Antioch, and we hear
+nothing more but complaints from him and soothing counsel from his
+friends until after he and Eleanor returned from this disastrous
+crusade. Eleanor's caprice and haughty temper had almost driven Louis to
+despair, and perhaps it was this constant domestic irritant which
+exacerbated his temper and caused those quarrels with the Emperor Conrad
+which resulted in the miserable failure of the Christian arms at the
+very gates of Damascus.
+
+Eleanor returned to France, and continued to give her husband cause of
+complaint not only by her conduct but by her tongue. Yet the
+ill-assorted pair lived in marital relations until the winter of
+1151-1152. During a journey to Aquitaine, however, a violent rupture
+occurred. Louis appealed to the Council of Beaugency for a divorce,
+declaring openly that he did not trust his wife, and could never feel
+sure of the legitimacy of her issue. But Eleanor, as usual, had been
+beforehand with him. She, too, appealed for divorce, and her appeal was
+in the hands of the Council before that of her husband. Less frank and
+more politic than Louis, Eleanor sought for an annulment of the marriage
+on the ground that she and Louis were cousins--they were related in the
+sixth degree. The Council, which might have been seriously embarrassed
+by discussing and recognizing such a plea as that of Louis against one
+of the most powerful princesses of Christendom, discreetly granted
+Eleanor's plea, and annulled the marriage, March 18, 1152. Louis lost a
+wife who despised him, and whom he dreaded for her violence and her
+sharp tongue. France lost all those rich provinces which had come as
+Eleanor's dower.
+
+The divorced queen, now reigning Duchess of Guienne, was at once pursued
+by a number of suitors. With all the romance and sentiment said to be
+characteristic of southern France in her day it is hard to reconcile
+facts like those that follow. Thibaud de Blois was bent on capturing the
+rich duchess, and when she refused him, he plotted to capture her, to
+imprison her in his castle of Blois, and to force her to marry him.
+Fortunately, Eleanor was warned of the plot and escaped to her own
+frontier; but here young Geoffrey of Anjou, aged eighteen, laid an
+ambuscade for her on the Loire, intending to marry her himself. Again
+she escaped, this time to her own county of Poitou. Into Poitiers she
+was followed almost at once by Geoffrey's elder brother, Henry
+Plantagenet. Handsome, masterful, brilliant, Henry was of the very type
+to captivate Eleanor. It is altogether probable that she had had a
+previous understanding with him, and had conducted the proceedings for
+divorce on his advice. At any rate, they were married at Bordeaux on the
+1st of May, 1152, in spite of the opposition of Louis as Henry's feudal
+lord. Two years later Henry succeeded King Stephen, and Eleanor was
+Queen of England.
+
+A troubadour queen was certainly no fit mate for Louis VII.; and now
+that Eleanor has secured her divorce from Louis, and has married a man
+of temperament somewhat similar to her own, let us step aside from the
+story of her career in history to tell something more of her relation to
+the troubadours, and of the troubadours themselves.
+
+Not inheriting any of her grandfather's talent as a singer, Eleanor yet
+made her court a haven for troubadours. Unfortunately, we know but
+little of her personal relations with her troubadour courtiers, though
+tradition has conjectured that they were by no means always platonic. It
+was after her marriage to Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, that she
+became the special protectress of a forlorn troubadour lover, Bernard de
+Ventadour. He was, as we have noticed, of very low birth, the son of a
+baker in the Chateau de Ventadour; but he had risen in his lord's favor
+by reason of his poetic powers. The fair young Viscountess de Ventadour,
+a perfect angel of beauty in the eyes of the poet, delighted to listen
+to his songs of love. At first these songs did not distinctly refer to
+her; but the allusions became more unequivocal, and the songs became
+warmer, till one day, as they sat under the shade of a pine tree,
+Bernard singing to her, the viscountess suddenly kissed her minstrel.
+The poet tells us in a song that so great was his bliss and ecstasy that
+the winter landscape seemed suddenly to blossom with all the flowers of
+spring. And now he sang more openly of love, and at length put the fair
+lady's own name in his songs as the object of his passion. The viscount
+could no longer overlook his wife's conduct; so the viscountess was shut
+up in a tower and Bernard was driven out of the Limousin.
+
+Eleanor gave the banished troubadour a kindly welcome. She listened to
+his songs, heard his plaintive story, and consoled him. Eleanor was
+unquestionably a beautiful woman, and at that time she was still in her
+prime. It is no wonder that the soft heart of the troubadour soon forgot
+its grief for the lost Lady de Ventadour in the new love for his
+gracious protector. Both Eleanor and the troubadour were probably really
+in love, for she was as susceptible as he, though neither was capable,
+perhaps, of lasting affection. At any rate, Bernard wrote for her songs
+full of love and longing, declaring that her image dwells with him
+always, that in her absence he cannot sleep, and that the mere thought
+of her is sweeter far than sleep. Henry II. was not himself
+irreproachable as a husband, and perhaps he thought it wise not to look
+too closely into what his wife was doing. Just at this time, however,
+Henry became King of England, and there was no need to urge Eleanor to
+hasten across the channel to become queen; her vanity was sufficient for
+that. The new queen and her troubadour were parted, and, says his
+biographer, from that time Bernard remained sad and woeful. He writes
+her that, for her sake, he will cross the channel, for he is both a
+Norman and an Englishman now; but we do not know that the intimacy
+between them was renewed.
+
+This story is the only one of any detail showing the direct relations
+between Eleanor and the troubadours. There are, however, a score of
+other anecdotes which serve to show the relation of other women of her
+class--not all princesses, but at least of the higher nobility--to the
+troubadours. As illustrative of the position of women in Provence at
+this time we may select a story as famous in troubadour annals as that
+of Francesca da Rimini.
+
+The Lady Margarida de Roussillon, says the Provencal biography, was the
+"most beautiful lady of her time, and the most prized for all that is
+praiseworthy, and noble, and courteous." She lived in happiness with her
+husband, the powerful Baron Raymond de Roussillon. But in her suite was
+a page, Guillem de Cabestanh, poor, but of noble birth, with whose
+handsome face and gracious ways the Lady Margarida fell in love. "Love
+kindled her thoughts with fire," till at last the passion so
+overmastered her that she said to Guillem one day: "Guillem, if a lady
+were to love you, could you love her?" "Certainly, my lady," replied the
+young man, "if I thought she loved truly." "Well spoken! Tell me, now,
+can you distinguish true love from counterfeit?"
+
+These questions roused the smouldering love in Guillem's heart, and he
+gave vent to it in "stanzas graceful and gay, and tunes and canzos, and
+his songs found favor with all, but most with her for whom he sang."
+Margarida, indeed, knew that he loved her and that the songs were
+inspired by her, though Guillem had not as yet ventured to name her in
+them or to speak to her. Once again she spoke to her timid lover, and he
+confessed his love. Then began the love story, the troubadour pouring
+out his sweetest songs and trusting fondly that, because he did not name
+her, no one would guess their love. But the gossips began to talk of
+them, till at last the scandal came to the ear of Sir Raymond. "He was
+ill pleased and hot with rage through having lost the friend he loved so
+well, and more because of the shame of his spouse." Instead of taking
+summary vengeance, however, he bided his time till the guilty pair could
+be self-convicted.
+
+One day when Guillem had gone off hawking alone Margarida saw Raymond
+hide his sword under his cloak and follow after Guillem. She waited in
+fearful anxiety till they returned, Raymond apparently in good humor
+with Guillem and all the world. Raymond told her that he had discovered
+who was the lady of Guillem's songs. Margarida's terror may be imagined.
+"I knew," said Raymond, "that no one could sing so well unless he loved.
+When I conjured him, by his faith, to tell me whom he loved, he evaded
+me at first, but at length confessed that it was your sister, Lady Agnes
+de Tarascon." He then told her that it was all true, moreover, for he
+had ridden to the Chateau de Tarascon with Guillem, and that, after some
+hesitancy, the Lady Agnes had admitted that Guillem was her lover.
+Margarida was at first dumfounded, and completely incredulous; but her
+husband's statements were so exact that she was finally convinced of
+Guillem's faithlessness.
+
+At their first private interview she taxed him with his ingratitude, and
+would scarcely listen to his denials. Guillem told her that, seeing
+himself forced into a corner by Raymond's persistent questions, he had
+named the Lady Agnes in desperation, to prevent immediate discovery and
+death. The Lady Agnes and her husband, whom she had told of the
+intrigue, soon confirmed the lover's story. Lady Agnes had seen the
+distress in Guillem's countenance when Raymond brought him to Tarascon
+and asked her, in his presence, who was her lover. To save Guillem and
+her sister, Lady Agnes had admitted that Guillem was her lover, and she
+and her husband had done all in their power to convince Raymond of this
+fact. One need hardly remark on the social conditions or the general
+laxity of morals implied in the naive recital of such an incident.
+
+To continue Margarida's story, the lovers were reconciled and Guillem
+celebrated the reconciliation in a song. Unfortunately he had grown
+rash, and alluded too openly in this song to the very circumstances of
+their case. "No man," he sang, "suffers greater martyrdom than I; for
+you, whom I desire more than aught in this world, I must disavow and
+deny, and lie as if no love were in my heart. Whate'er I do through fear
+of my life, you must take in good faith, even though you do not see why
+I do it." This song, some portions of which were violently amorous, came
+to the hands of Raymond. He guessed the truth at once, and planned an
+awful vengeance.
+
+Some days later, as the husband and wife were seated at dinner, the Lady
+Margarida commented on the delicacy of a bit of deer's heart which she
+had eaten. "Do you know," said Raymond, "what you have been eating?"
+"No, but I found it delicious." "This will show you," he said, raising
+before her the bloody head of Guillem Cabestanh. "Behold the head of the
+man whose heart you have just eaten!" The lady fainted at the horrible
+sight, and when she recovered screamed aloud that the heart she had
+eaten was so good and savory that never more would she eat meat. The
+maddened husband rushed at her with drawn sword, and she, to escape
+death at his hands, cast herself out of a window and was dashed to
+pieces.
+
+The story has a little sequel, not less instructive and enlightening in
+its way. "The news of the deed spread rapidly, and was received
+everywhere with grief and indignation; and all the friends of Guillem
+and the lady, and all the courteous knights of the neighborhood, and all
+those who were lovers, united to make war against Raymond." King
+Alphonso of Arragon invaded Raymond's dominions, took him prisoner, kept
+him in captivity the rest of his days, and divided his property among
+the relatives of the murdered lovers. The unhappy pair he caused to be
+buried in one tomb, and erected over them a sumptuous monument, whither
+once a year came all the knights and all the fond lovers of Roussillon,
+Cerdagne, and Narbonnais, to pray for the souls of Guillem Cabestanh and
+the fair Lady Margarida. In the glamor of romance, morality and common
+decency are apt to be lost sight of. The romancer enlists all our
+sympathies for the guilty Paolo and Francesca of this story, while
+Raymond, the miserable husband, meets with captivity and the loss of his
+property. We may add that the main facts of this story are confirmed,
+even to the episode of the heart, by several accounts in manuscripts,
+though imagination is doubtless responsible for certain details.
+
+In the loves of the troubadours one is constantly encountering stories
+not less immoral though less tragic than this one, as we may see in the
+story of the Lady de Miravals. The wife of Raymond de Miravals, a rich
+baron and famous troubadour, being neglected by her husband, had formed
+a secret attachment for a knight called Bremon. She was pining in secret
+for her lover when, to her delight, Raymond threatened to divorce her,
+because he himself had tired of her and was in love with another lady
+who insisted that he should divorce his wife. Seeing in the threatened
+divorce a chance of perfect liberty in her relations with Bremon, the
+Lady de Miravals pretended extreme grief and indignation. Such treatment
+from an ungrateful husband she would not stand, she said. She would send
+for her parents and relatives to see justice done or to take her away.
+To this Raymond, apparently, made no very determined resistance. The
+lady, with great show of wrath, sent a messenger to summon her family,
+secretly directing him to go to Bremon and tell him that she was ready
+to marry him if he would come. Bremon came with alacrity, accompanied by
+a troop of his knights, and halted at the gate of the castle. The
+expectant Lady de Miravals, seeing her lover ready, announced to Raymond
+that her friends had come for her, and that she would be pleased if he
+would allow her to leave at once. Raymond consented; in fact, he was so
+pleased at the prospect of being rid of his wife that, with unwonted
+courtesy, he himself conducted her to the castle gate. Seeing that her
+little plot was working so well, the runaway wife could not forbear
+adding one more touch to this lovely little deception. "Sir," said she
+to Raymond, "since we part such good friends, with no regrets, would you
+not be good enough to give me, no longer your wife, to this gentleman?"
+Nothing was easier to Raymond than unmarrying a wife of whom he was
+tired. With ready courtesy he gave her to Bremon, who, receiving her
+from her husband's hands, put the ring on her finger and rode off, in
+high glee, with his lady-love.
+
+We do not know whether the Lady de Miravals and her new husband found
+the course of their love smooth or rough; but the too complaisant
+Raymond met with very bad luck, which he most richly deserved. As soon
+as his wife was gone, he posted off to tell his lady-love that her
+commands had been obeyed and that he had now come to marry her. But this
+lady, who seems to have cared nothing for the foolish troubadour except
+to have the honor of having him make a fool of himself for her, said:
+"It is well done, Raymond; you have sent away your wife to please me.
+Now go and prepare for a magnificent wedding at your castle, and let me
+know when you are ready to receive your bride in fitting style." The
+troubadour rushed home, spent weeks and squandered his substance in
+preparations for his bride, and went back to claim her. Alas! this very
+sensible lady had married another man--we hope not a troubadour--on the
+very day after she had sent Raymond on his fool's errand.
+
+With all his protestations of undying devotion, it not infrequently
+happened that the troubadour did not continue to devote himself to one
+lady. Sometimes the lady found a more acceptable lover, or became tired
+of the love rhapsodies of her troubadour. But it was dangerous to
+dismiss one of these violent poets without good excuse, for he might
+turn from love songs to _sirventes_, and satirize her whom before he had
+extolled as a paragon. One of the most amusing of the anecdotes of the
+troubadours is that telling how Marie de Ventadour got rid of the
+attentions of Gaucelm Faidit.
+
+The beautiful Countess Marie de Ventadour was, says the old Provencal
+historian quoted in Mr. Rowbotham's _The Troubadours and Courts of
+Love_, to which we are indebted for many of the facts here used, "the
+most esteemed lady in the province of Limousin; the lady who prided
+herself most on doing whatever was right and good, and who best
+preserved and defended herself from all evil; who always shaped her
+conduct by the rules of reason, and never at any time committed an act
+of folly." Her charms were celebrated by many a troubadour, but her most
+devoted admirer was Gaucelm Faidit. Gaucelm, the son of an artisan of
+Uzerche, had been raised from his low estate by the favor of the
+troubadour Richard Coeur de Lion, and his talent had assured his
+position in what one might call the best society. Marie, like other
+ladies of her time, was rather vain of her troubadour admirers, and did
+not disdain the brilliant but lowborn Gaucelm Faidit. But she told him
+that, if he was to win her love, he must show himself worthy of it by
+prowess in battle, and suggested that he accompany her husband--whom we
+neglected to mention before--on the third Crusade, just then being
+organized. The poet, though not very fond of fighting, took the Cross,
+went to the Holy Land, sent home to his lady-love most ferocious poems
+telling of the perils he was encountering or escaping, and then made his
+way back to the Chateau de Ventadour as soon as he could find a decent
+excuse for doing so. Marie, however, was not so gracious to him as he
+had hoped; she did not love him for the dangers he had passed, or for
+his telling of them. She was, in fact, decidedly cold to him. Gaucelm,
+in a rage, left the chateau, saying: "I shall never see you again! But
+perhaps I can find another lady who will treat me with more
+consideration." Marie was rather glad to be rid of her poet's
+tempestuous love; but she was afraid of his sharp tongue; he could write
+most bitter _sirventes_: what if he should avenge himself on her by
+turning against her all his satiric powers?
+
+In this dilemma she resorted to a stratagem which her friend, Madame de
+Malamort helped her to put in practice, Madame de Malamort sent a
+message to the troubadour asking: "Which do you prefer, a little bird in
+the hand, or a crane flying high in the air?" Gaucelm's curiosity was
+piqued; he came to ask her to unravel this riddle. "I am the little
+bird," said she, "whom you hold in your hand, and Marie de Ventadour is
+the crane who flies far above your head. Am I not as beautiful as she?
+Love me who love you, and let this haughty countess find out, as she
+will, what a treasure she has lost." The vanity of the troubadour,
+incensed by what he thought unjust treatment, could not withstand this
+artful attack. He consented to be off with the old love, and the new
+love required that he take leave of the old love, not in any violent
+sirvente, but in a poem relentless, stern, yet calm and dignified; after
+which he might begin to sing as he pleased about the new love. Too proud
+of his new conquest to suspect the trick being played on him, Gaucelm
+bade farewell to Marie de Ventadour in a formal and very dignified
+fashion. When he turned now to sing of joy and spring and the like to
+Madame de Malamort he found his attentions very coldly received; and the
+lady soon gave him to understand that, having got her friend out of a
+difficulty, she cared not a fig for any troubadour. Gaucelm was nicely
+trapped; he could not indulge in abuse of either lady without danger of
+having the whole foolish tale told at his expense. He became a heretic
+toward love, and satirized women in general; but he soon recovered from
+this, and lived to be consoled by other ladies, and to be fooled by one
+more. This one, Marguerite d'Aubusson, pretending the most devoted and
+innocent romantic love for Gaucelm, used to meet her real lover under
+cover of Gaucelm's roof.
+
+Though not at all essential to the story, it is a fact worth mentioning
+that Gaucelm Faidit himself was married while the romance with Marie was
+in progress. The wife of a troubadour, indeed, was not allowed to
+interfere with any really serious business of his career, such as a love
+affair with another man's wife. That this was so, in theory at least,
+can be seen in the story of the lives of many of the troubadours; and
+that the general attitude of Provencal society, as represented by this
+particular phase of its literature, was unfavorable to matrimony, can be
+seen most clearly when we look at those curious institutions called
+Courts of Love. It is not yet quite certain whether the Courts of Love
+are altogether or only partly mythical.
+
+This century of ours is a Sancho Panza among the centuries; like that
+stout and excellent squire, we have unlimited faith in things material,
+visible, tangible, and especially eatable and no faith in things
+romantic, such as windmills, and knights-errant, and chivalry. Looked at
+from the Panzaic point of view, which we are fain to admit is also the
+common-sense point of view, it seems inherently most improbable that any
+set of people should waste their time upon anything so fantastic as the
+Courts of Love. Yet Panza should be asked to remember that there are and
+have been things in heaven and earth that surpass the limits of his
+philosophy; that the race among whom such institutions are alleged to
+have flourished was notoriously sentimental, or poetic, if you like a
+more respectful term; that, for a parallel, he has only to go to a
+famous French romance, published less than two centuries ago, which
+contained a grave description and map of the Country of Love, a _Carte
+du pays de Tendre_, with minute directions as to how the amorous
+traveller might proceed safely on his journey to the city of true love;
+and that Moliere's _Precieuses Ridicules_, however overdrawn for comic
+effect, presents a picture of what really existed. Reason is,
+undoubtedly, opposed to the possibility of the existence of the Courts
+of Love; but, as we have said, we cannot always refuse to believe what
+seems to us preposterous. The historical evidence for the existence of
+the Courts of Love is unquestionably very scanty. Mr. Rowbotham, who
+believes firmly in their existence, is forced to rely upon the testimony
+of one contemporary witness, of very uncertain date (Andrew the
+Chaplain, "who lived probably about the end of the twelfth century"),
+and two very obscure allusions to courts and trials in the poems of the
+troubadours. The chief sources for our knowledge of the Courts of Love
+are writers long subsequent to the events, notably Jean de Nostredame,
+who, in 1575, published a book entitled _Les Vies des plus celebres et
+anciens poetes provensaux_. But the tradition is so well established,
+and above all so intimately associated with Queen Eleanor, that we shall
+give a little sketch of the courts and their doings.
+
+The _tensons_ of the troubadours were poetic disputes on points of love
+and on lovers' conduct. If, says Jean de Nostredame, the disputants
+"could not come to an agreement they referred the matter for decision to
+the illustrious lady presidents who held open and plenary court at the
+Castle of Signe, and other places, and these gave judgments which were
+called the judgments of Love." If a lady treated her troubadour lover
+unfairly, or if a lover were guilty of any dereliction or crime in love,
+or if, for the guidance of future generations of lovers, a decision on a
+mere point of gallantry were sought, all such cases came before the
+Courts of Love, which had a regular code of laws, thirty-one in number,
+upon which decisions were based. The court, composed of a jury of the
+most beautiful, accomplished, and celebrated ladies of the neighborhood,
+and presided over by some lady of special distinction, heard the pleas
+on both sides, and gave judgment, which depended upon a unanimous vote
+of the jury. There were several of these courts, the most famous being
+those of Queen Eleanor of England, of her daughter, Marie de Champagne,
+of the Viscountess of Narbonne, and of the Countess of Flanders. The
+code under which these fantastic tribunals are said to have given their
+judgment is a very curious document. The statutes of love are hardly so
+rigorous as might be expected; some of them are merely proverbial bits
+of wisdom, with here and there a hint very far from romantic:
+
+IV. Love never stands still; it always increases--or diminishes.
+
+X. Love is always an exile where avarice holds his dwelling.
+
+Some seem so distinctly suggestive of a smirk beneath all this affected
+seriousness that one can hardly take them seriously.
+
+XV. Every lover is accustomed to grow pale at the sight of his
+lady-love.
+
+XVI. At the sudden and unexpected sight of his lady-love the heart of
+the true lover invariably palpitates.
+
+XX. A real lover is always the prey of anxiety and malaise.
+
+XXIII. A person who is the prey of love eats little and sleeps little.
+
+This last is, of course, a rule not only venerable, but universal. One
+recalls Chaucer's Squire, "as fresshe as is the moneth of May," who
+"coude songes make, and wel endite;... so hote he loved that by
+nightertale he slep no more than doth the nightingale." Others of the
+troubadour statutes are frankly suggestive of that moral laxity, not to
+say obliquity of vision, of which we have spoken before.
+
+I. Marriage cannot be pleaded as an excuse for refusing to love.
+
+XI. It is not becoming to love those ladies who love only with a view to
+marriage.
+
+XXVI. Love can deny nothing to love.
+
+With this little group of laws in mind one can but reflect that, pushed
+to their logical conclusion, they are suggestive of moral laxity. We are
+not, however, left to guessing. According to Andrew the Chaplain, the
+court of the Countess of Champagne was asked, on April 29, 1174, to
+decide this question: "Can real love exist between married people?" The
+countess and her court decided "that love cannot exercise its powers on
+married people," the following reason being given in proof of the
+assertion: "Lovers grant everything, mutually and gratuitously, without
+being constrained by any motive of necessity. Married people, on the
+contrary, are compelled as a duty to submit to one another's wishes, and
+not to refuse anything to one another. For this reason it is evident
+that love cannot exercise its powers on married people. Let this
+decision, which we have arrived at with great deliberation, and after
+taking counsel of a large number of ladies, be held henceforward as a
+confirmed and irrefragable truth."
+
+Quite in line with this judgment is one reported from the court of Queen
+Eleanor. A gentleman, the complainant in the suit, was deeply in love
+with a lady who loved another. Taking compassion on him, however, she
+promised that, if ever she should lose her first lover, the complainant
+should be received as his successor. The lady shortly after married her
+lover. Thereupon the complainant, citing the decision of the Countess of
+Champagne, demanded her love. The lady refused, denying that she had
+lost the love of her lover by marrying him. Wherefore the complainant
+humbly sued for judgment, we presume it might be called a writ _mandamus
+amare_. The honorable court handed down a decision for the complainant,
+declaring that the solemn decree of the court of the Countess of
+Champagne was of force in the present case, and issuing the writ
+_mandamus amare_ as prayed for: "We order that the lady grant to her
+imploring lover, now the complainant before this court, the favors which
+he so earnestly entreats, and which she so faithfully has promised."
+
+One other decision of the gay Queen Eleanor is so righteous that we
+cannot forbear repeating it. A gentleman brought suit because a lady of
+whom he was enamored had accepted numerous handsome gifts from him and
+yet persistently denied him her love. We are not altogether sure whether
+the gentleman was not really bringing suit to recover his presents; but
+Queen Eleanor gave judgment: "A lady who is determined to be inflexible
+must either refuse to receive any gifts which are sent with the object
+of winning her love, or she must make compensation for them, or she must
+be content to be classed as a courtesan."
+
+In all this world of love and song were the women merely objects of the
+troubadour's song, or merely patronesses of the troubadour? Were there
+no poetesses? The names of fourteen ladies who may be called troubadours
+by reason of their own works are all of whom we have record, and even of
+these fourteen not one was really a professional troubadour; in most
+cases it is but one song, or even one part of a _tenson_, which gives
+the lady a right to be named among the poets. We find Clara D'Anduse,
+the beautiful love of the troubadour Uc de St. Cyr, remembered for but
+one song; and but little more remains of the work of Countess Beatrice
+de Die, who loved Rambaut d'Orange, and who tells of how this troubadour
+loved her, and grew cold to her, and finally was faithless, forsaking
+her for another; but she and her sister troubadours are shadowy figures:
+the time had not come for woman to take a permanent place in literature.
+
+In our attempt to present the literary and artistic side of Eleanor's
+life, and to tell something of the brilliant society of Provence in
+which she played no small part, we have neglected the facts of her
+career in England. As Queen Eleanor of England, however, we shall not
+have much to say of her. Even now she does not play a very prominent
+part in history, and the development of her character is quite in line
+with the moral training one would acquire in the Courts of Love. It does
+seem as if there were such a thing as reaping the whirlwind.
+
+Eleanor was eleven years older than her new husband. She had despised
+Louis because he was too austere, too cold, too plain in mind and in
+morals. Her new husband soon gave her ample cause to develop a new
+passion jealousy. She learned to hate him for vices the very opposite of
+Louis's colorless virtue. She herself had been notoriously a coquette,
+and not an innocent one. She felt the eleven years of difference between
+herself and Henry. The gossips said she could hardly expect to retain
+Henry's affection, she who was so much older, and who had been, it was
+rumored, the mistress of Henry's own father. Despite the gallant
+principles she had professed in her own Court of Love, despite the
+latitude to which she had thought herself entitled, she became furiously
+jealous of Henry. There was, indeed, much reason for jealousy. Young,
+hot-blooded, passionate, as greedy of pleasure as of power, Henry lost
+no time in giving her numerous rivals. No means were too vile or too
+violent when Henry wished to gratify his passions. It is said that he
+even dishonored the young Princess Alice of France, betrothed to his son
+Richard, and for that reason would never allow Richard to marry her.
+There we're fierce quarrels between Eleanor and Henry, and tradition has
+ascribed to her the murder of Fair Rosamond Clifford, whom she is said
+to have pursued into the labyrinth of Woodstock and stabbed with her own
+hand.
+
+Finding it impossible to avenge herself in any other way, Eleanor
+stirred up her sons against their father. They were all turbulent
+enough, and needed little encouragement. The eldest living son, Henry,
+injudiciously crowned king by his father's desire, persuaded himself
+that he must be king in deed, and was spurred on by his mother and by
+her friend, the restless troubadour Bertrand de Born. Raymond of
+Toulouse, who had been sought by them as an ally, revealed the plot of
+the queen and her sons to Henry. Young Henry and his brothers fled to
+France, where they were received by Louis with royal honors. Eleanor was
+imprisoned in her own duchy, and in prison she remained during Henry's
+lifetime. The troubadours, devoted to their duchess, sang dolorous songs
+upon her captivity, and voiced their hatred of her jailer, Henry, in
+burning _sirventes_. But Henry went on relentlessly in the intermittent
+struggle with his sons, conquered Bertrand de Born, and kept his
+rebellious subjects in check. Not till he died, cursing Richard and
+John, who had again been in revolt against him, was the queen released.
+
+Hardly had Richard been crowned before he departed for the Crusade,
+leaving Eleanor as regent. Even against her own son the old queen
+intrigued; yet it was partly her indignant intervention which later
+helped to release Richard from the German prison where the emperor,
+instigated by Philip Augustus, would have kept him. The son whom she
+loved best, John, loved and trusted her no more than did Richard. In the
+struggle between Philip Augustus, championing Arthur of Brittany, and
+John, Eleanor seems to have kept faith with her son, and to have given
+him shrewd if cruel counsel. We hear of her but once or twice more in
+active affairs. In 1200 she was sent by John into Spain to bring back
+his niece, Blanche de Castille, who was betrothed to Prince Louis of
+France by one of the terms of a treaty just concluded between John and
+Philip Augustus. On her return, when passing through Bordeaux, a mob set
+upon and killed one of her party, the detested Mercader, captain of
+Richard's Brabancon mercenaries. Eleanor, old, and sick with fatigue and
+fright at this scene of horror, could proceed no further, and stayed in
+the abbey of Fontevrault, sending Blanche on with the Archbishop of
+Bordeaux. She rallied from this illness, however, and two years later
+had a narrow escape from being captured by her grandson, Arthur. She was
+besieged, and very hard pressed, in the Chateau de Mirebeau, when Arthur
+and his followers were surprised and captured by John. This episode of a
+grand-mother besieged by her own grandson is quite in line with the
+traditions of the family. "It is the fate of our family that none should
+love the other," said Geoffrey Plantagenet.
+
+In the midst of the triumph of Philip Augustus over her miserable son
+John, old Queen Eleanor died, in the convent of Beaulieu, in 1204. The
+miseries of her declining years make us more charitable toward her; but
+it is impossible to respect a character such as that of England's
+troubadour queen. One sometimes finds her praised for a splendid virtue,
+that of impulsive generosity; but there was no generosity in her nature;
+she was merely lavish in spending for her own pleasure. In keeping with
+what a great historian has said of her son Richard Coeur de Lion, one
+may say that she was a bad wife,--to two husbands,--a bad mother, and a
+bad queen. There was in her nature none of the tenderness which alone
+can ensure domestic love, nor yet enough force to enable her to make
+herself a great queen.
+
+Even before the death of their patroness the glories of the troubadours
+were fading. There was an angry murmur, growing ever stronger, against
+the immorality of the troubadours, and particularly against a new and
+formidable heresy which had gained ground rapidly in the south of
+France. With the doctrines of the Albigenses we are not concerned; it is
+difficult to discover the exact truth about them, since we must rely
+chiefly upon the testimony of their enemies. It is sufficiently well
+established, however, that the Albigenses believed in a form of
+Manichseism which asserted the existence of two Eternal powers,
+equipotent, the one a power of Good, the other a power of Evil. Since
+Evil ruled the world on equal terms with Good, might not man feel
+utterly relieved of moral responsibility? Certainly, such is the
+tendency of this species of Dualism.
+
+Whether the Albigensian heresy be responsible or not, it is
+unquestionable that the troubadours were in nearly all cases
+indifferent, and in very many cases sceptical or utterly rebellious, in
+their attitude toward the Church and its teachings. Among the nobility
+the sacrament of marriage, so carefully hedged about by the canons of
+the Church, could hardly have been regarded with much respect, since a
+venal clergy was ready to sanction a union which their own Church
+pronounced incestuous or to dissolve one which their own Church
+pronounced indissoluble. Political and racial antipathy, the old
+ineradicable and inexplicable hatred of north for south, helped on the
+religious quarrel. Count Raymond of Toulouse, who seems to have been
+merely an easy-going man, inclined rather to religious liberty and
+freedom of conscience than to positive heresy, was assailed as a monster
+of vice. At length, in 1208, Pope Innocent III. authorized the
+Cistercian monks to preach a crusade against the Albigenses: "Arise! ye
+soldiers of Christ! exterminate this impiety by every means that God may
+reveal to you. Stretch forth your arms and smite the heretics, making
+upon them war more relentless than upon the Saracens." So ran the papal
+letters. The new crusade was preached far and wide over France, Germany,
+and Italy, and a host of crusaders, promised greater indulgences than
+those who went to the Holy Land, assembled to destroy Provence. Among
+their leaders were two recreant troubadours, Izarn, who leaves us his
+version of the fall of Provence, and Folquet, now Bishop of Toulouse,
+who is so cruel, so bitter, so treacherous in the cause of Christ that
+one enjoys hearing him called by the troubadour nickname "Bishop of
+Devils." More terrible than Folquet, because more sincere, was one
+Domingo, canon of Osma, a man of almost puritanic habits of mind, famous
+in history as the founder of the order of _Fratres Predicatores_, the
+Dominican Preaching Friars, and of an institution not less well
+known--the Inquisition. The military leader who really broke the back of
+the resistance in Provence was Simon de Montfort. The siege and capture
+of Beziers, where a number of those accused of heresy had taken refuge,
+will serve to show in what spirit the whole war was conducted. When
+Beziers was taken the soldiers asked Abbot Arnold, of Citeaux, who
+represented the Church of Mercy: "How shall we distinguish the faithful
+from the heretics among the people of the town?" The priest answered:
+_Caedite eos, novit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus_: "Kill them all, for the
+Lord will know His own." In this spirit the Albigensian war continued,
+with occasional respites, for more than thirty years. Over the land of
+the troubadours brooded the menacing figure of the Inquisition; and fair
+women no less than men knew the sinister meaning of "_La Question_" the
+inquisition by torture, by scores of devices of ingenious cruelty, of
+which the "rack" and the iron "boot" are best remembered. The brilliant
+life of the south was extinguished. We hear the piteous wail of the fast
+disappearing singers: "Oh! Toulouse and Provence, land of Agen, Beziers,
+and Carcassonne; as I have seen you, and as I see you now!"
+
+While Provencal literature was thus perishing miserably, that of France
+was gradually unfolding; and we find here and there some _grande dame_
+named as a patroness of literature. Most of them are but names, yet we
+find that the Countess Marie de Champagne, Queen Eleanor's daughter,
+encouraged the great _trouvere_ Chrestien de Troies. She made him
+introduce into his romances the notions of love and chivalry fostered in
+the Courts of Love, and gave him the theme of his romance of _Lancelot_,
+or _Le conte de la Charrette_ (about 1170). For Blanche de Navarre was
+made a prose translation of saints' lives. A poet named Menessier
+completed, about 1220, for the Countess Jeanne de Flandre a poem on
+Perceval and his search for the Holy Grail.
+
+One French woman of this period, moreover, won for herself an abiding
+place in literature. Of her personality we know nothing, and we are even
+ignorant of the dates of her birth and death. Gathering her materials
+from Welsh and Breton traditions and popular songs, she wrote a number
+of _lays_, as she called them. These lays are short poems, in verse of
+eight syllables, recounting some little romantic tale or adventure.
+There are about twenty of them, of which fifteen, at least, are ascribed
+to Marie. From another of her works we glean the few facts that follow,
+substantially all that we know of her:
+
+"At the end of this work, which I have translated and sung in the
+Romance tongue (French), I will tell you something of myself. Marie is
+my name, and I am of France. It may be that several clerks might take it
+upon themselves to claim my work, and I wish none to say it is his: who
+forgets himself works to no purpose. For the love of Count William, the
+most valiant man in this kingdom, I undertook to write this book and to
+translate it from English into Romance. He who wrote this book, or
+translated it, called it Ysopet. He translated it from Greek into Latin.
+King Henry (some manuscripts say Alfred), who loved it greatly, then
+translated it into English, and I have turned it into French verse as
+accurately as I could. Now I pray to God Almighty that I may be given
+strength to do such work that I may give my soul into His hands, that it
+may go straight to Heaven above. Say Amen, all of you, that God may
+grant my prayer."
+
+This conclusion of one of the fables in the book called _Ysopet_, which
+we have translated freely, shows us that Marie was of French birth, but
+that she had, probably, lived for a time in England. Who was Count
+William? We are free to guess, but there seems no chance of confirming
+the guess. Some have supposed him to be William Longsword, the reputed
+son of Henry II. and Rosamond; while Henry, the king who loved the book
+so well, might be Henry Beauclerc. But as the English book from which
+Marie translated is lost, there is again no chance of confirmation. It
+is now generally agreed, however, that Marie lived and wrote about the
+end of the reign of Henry II.
+
+_Ysopet_, or _Ysope_, as it is sometimes spelled, is nothing more than
+the name of our dear old AEsop, whom childhood loves and whom folklore is
+proving a myth. The term came to be the generic one in Old French for
+collections of fables on the model of Marie's. Marie's fables cannot
+compete with those of her great French successor, La Fontaine; and yet
+one is always insensibly comparing them with his. The literary value of
+her works is not great; the recital is too cold and impersonal; there is
+too much of the apologue and none of that delightful individuality, the
+reflection of his own mind, which La Fontaine manages to impress upon
+his creatures; the writer shows no sympathy with the "little people" of
+her fables.
+
+The lays are decidedly more entertaining, and show considerable
+narrative power, as well as an unconscious appreciation of the romantic
+beauty of the incidents, many of which have to do with fairies and
+enchantment. They are tales of love and adventure, full of marvels. One
+meets King Arthur and Tristram, and a host of knights and ladies
+transformed by the fairies. We may mention the pathetic _Lai de Frene_,
+a story related to the famous one of _Patient Grissel_; the story of
+_Guingamor_, a tale of a knight who lives three days in fairyland and
+comes back to find that three hundred years had passed on earth; and the
+story of the werewolf Bisclavret, which we may give as a specimen of
+this very interesting portion of Old French literature interesting, at
+least, to those who love literature in its infancy.
+
+"When I set out to write lays," says Marie, "I would not forget
+Bisclavret. In Breton he is called Bisclavret, while the Normans call
+him _garwalf_ (werewolf)." We have heard often enough, she continues, of
+men who became werewolves and lived in the forest. The werewolf is a
+savage beast, and when he is in a rage he devours men and does much
+damage. After this little preface, the tale goes on to tell of a knight
+of Brittany, courteous, rich, beloved by all his neighbors. His wife,
+however, was piqued by unreasoning curiosity about one thing, which was
+quite enough, indeed, to arouse the curiosity of any wife. This was the
+fact that for three days out of 'the week her husband disappeared, no
+one knew whither. At length, she asked her husband where he went, and,
+in spite of his reluctance to tell,
+
+        "tant le blandi e losenia
+        Que s'aventure li cunta,"
+
+that is, she wheedled and coaxed him till he told her that on three days
+of the week he must be a werewolf; that, going to the forest, he
+stripped himself and hid his clothing carefully, and then was turned
+into a wolf. He besought her not to reveal the hiding place of his
+clothing; for if, when the three days were over, he should come back in
+wolf form and find them gone, there would be no hope for him: he must be
+a wolf for the rest of his days. Now, the wife, as usually happens in
+such tales, was a wicked wife, anxious to rid herself of her werewolf
+husband and marry a knight who had long been her lover:
+
+        "Un chevalier de la cuntree,
+        Qui lungement l'aveit amee...
+        E mult dune en sun servise."
+
+To him she sends at once, and the guilty pair steal away the clothes of
+the poor werewolf at the very first opportunity. And thus was Bisclavret
+betrayed by his wife, who married him who had loved her long. The
+werewolf is condemned to continue in wolf form; but one must remember
+that there are disenchantments as well as enchantments in fairy stories,
+and that justice, of a kind which is frequently _sui generis_, is
+generally meted out to the guilty. The giant, it is true, gobbles up
+people and behaves horribly for a season, but there is always a giant
+killer in training for him. And so here, it is only for "one whole year"
+that Bisclavret remains transformed; for the king goes hunting in the
+forest, and his hounds pursue Bisclavret till the poor wretch runs
+straight to the feet of the king, kisses his feet, and asks mercy in
+such pitiful and almost human dumb show that the king orders him spared.
+
+Bisclavret, taken under royal protection, accompanies the court
+everywhere, till, on the occasion of a special assemblage of the barons,
+the man who had married his wife comes into his presence. Straight at
+his throat leapt the wolf-man, and would have torn him to pieces on the
+spot had not the king interfered. The obvious hatred of the wolf for
+this particular man aroused the king's suspicions, and these suspicions
+were still further intensified when, not long after, the wolf manifested
+the same violent hatred toward his former wife, now the wife of the
+knight, biting her and scratching her face in spite of all that could be
+done. Then, upon the advice of an old knight who remembered the
+mysterious disappearance of Bisclavret and who knew something of Breton
+legends, the king put the false wife to torture, and forced from her the
+confession of the truth. Bisclavret, shut up in a room with the clothes
+he had worn as a man, is transformed into a man once more and reinstated
+in his possessions. The unfaithful wife, accompanied by her paramour, is
+driven from the land, and, as a further retribution, several of her
+children were born without noses, the wolf having bitten off her nose.
+As Marie concludes, with triumphant rejoicing in the punishment of the
+wicked even unto the third and fourth generation, "'tis true, indeed,
+noseless were they born, and noseless did they live."
+
+This paraphrase of Marie's work can, of course, give no idea of its
+literary value; but the tale itself will serve as a sample of what the
+first woman in French literature wrote. We have from her also a
+translation of the famous legend of _Saint Patrick's Purgatory_, of how
+a knight journeyed into the lower regions and came back to warn the
+world of the punishments in store for the wicked. Marie represents but a
+beginning--and yet it is a beginning--of the writing in their mother
+tongue, which was to make famous many women as well as men of France. In
+her day, indeed, it was a distinction to write in the mother tongue, for
+among the classes which we should call literary Latin was considered the
+only proper vehicle for their wisdom. Long after her day, indeed, Latin
+still kept French from its birthright, and it will be two centuries
+before we come to another woman who writes in French. Though the great
+Heloise and her letters, written not long before Marie's time, take
+their place in literature, it is in the literature of scholastic Latin,
+not of old French.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WOMEN IN THE AGE OF SAINT LOUIS
+
+WHILE romance has preserved many memories, and history not a few facts,
+of Eleanor of Guienne, the records concerning two other notable women,
+her contemporaries, are very scanty. Whatever her faults, Eleanor was a
+great and commanding personality, one that could not be overlooked
+because, whether for good or ill, she was always powerful. The two
+unhappy queens of Philippe Auguste, Ingeburge de Danemark and Agnes de
+Meranie, though they were the innocent causes of much distress in
+France, are yet hardly known to us as personalities.
+
+The first queen of Philippe Auguste was Isabelle de Hainault; after her
+death he sought the hand of a Danish princess, Ingeburge, sister of Knut
+IV. The marriage was one contracted for political reasons; Philippe was
+at the time engaged in his lifelong struggle against the power of the
+Plantagenets, and desired an ally against Richard Coeur de Lion. At
+Amiens, on Assumption eve, 1193, Ingeburge was married to the King of
+France; the next day she was crowned Queen of France by the Archbishop
+of Rheims. During the ceremony, says a chronicler of Aix, "the King,
+looking on the Princess, began to conceive a horror of her; he trembled,
+he grew pale, he was so greatly troubled in spirit that he could hardly
+contain himself till the end of the ceremony." For some unknown reason
+the fair stranger seems to have awakened in him unconquerable
+repugnance; and from that moment he began to devise means of getting rid
+of her.
+
+Ingeburge, according to the testimony of those who had no special reason
+to favor her but every reason to justify the king, was of a gentle
+disposition, sensible, affectionate, and endowed with considerable
+beauty of the type usually associated with Danish women. She was a
+defenceless stranger, not even acquainted with the French language, and
+there were but few in France to champion her cause in the painful
+complications that followed. Philippe's aversion could by no means be
+accounted for; in the Middle Ages what could not be accounted for, if of
+evil nature, was the work of the devil or of his vicegerents on earth,
+the witches; so it was promptly reported that the King of France was
+bewitched, though it is not exactly apparent that the real force of the
+enchantment fell upon him it was Ingeburge who suffered.
+
+Philippe began proceedings to obtain an annulment of the marriage,
+which, he asseverated, had never been consummated. This was denied by
+Ingeburge, and we are inclined to take her word rather than that of the
+unscrupulous king, who, though a successful ruler, was not at all averse
+to falsehood where falsehood served his turn. The pair separated almost
+at once, and Philippe tried by ill treatment to make Ingeburge consent
+to a legal separation. After three months of the utmost unhappiness the
+young queen had the shame of hearing her marriage declared null and
+void. The council which rendered this decision consisted wholly of
+French prelates, presided over by the very Archbishop of Rheims who had
+pronounced the nuptial benediction over the pair. Ingeburge was at
+Compiegne, where the council met, and was present at the session at
+which her marriage was annulled on the frivolous pretext of a kinship,
+not between Philippe and Ingeburge for even the ingenuity of mediaeval
+genealogy could not trace out that but between the late Queen Isabella
+and Ingeburge. The unfortunate Danish lady could not understand what
+these priests were saying in the strange tongue of the land to which she
+had come to be a queen; when the purport of the proceedings was
+explained to her through an interpreter, she exclaimed, in tears: _"Male
+France! Male France!_ Rome! Rome!"
+
+[Illustration 3:
+DOMESTIC INTERIOR IN FRANCE, TWELFTH CENTURY.
+From a water-color by S. Baron, after a description by Viollet-le-Duc.
+The decorated fireplace, between two windows, was wide enough to hold
+logs eight or ten feet long. Two large benches were at right angles, one
+with a movable back, the other being double-seated. The table was fixed
+to the floor, the master's chair being elevated, other diners sat on
+stools. The tablecloth was used for wiping fingers and lips. The buffet,
+with cups and goblets on top, was used as to-day. Generally, the beds
+were narrow and displayed great luxury: the wood was carved, incrusted,
+or painted; the coverlets had fringes and embroideries; curtains formed
+an alcove, and a night lamp was hung at the foot. The room contained an
+oratory.
+
+In the rear were the kitchen, etc, and on the upper floors were sleeping
+and other chambers.]
+
+She did indeed appeal from "wicked France" to Rome, and the appeal was
+not without ultimate good effect. In the meantime she refused to
+prejudice her cause by returning to Denmark, and the heartless Philippe
+confined her, almost as a criminal, in a convent at Cisoing, in the
+Tournois; he did not even have the decency or the humanity to provide
+suitably for her actual needs.
+
+The appeal to Rome was pushed by Ingeburge's brother, Knut IV., and the
+Pope, Celestine III., at length granted the appeal, on March 13, 1196,
+reversing the decree of the council of Compiegne. The papal power was
+then in very weak hands, and it was fear of offending the great King of
+France that had occasioned the long delay in rendering justice to
+Ingeburge. That something more than a mere papal decree would be needed
+to subdue Philippe was apparent when, in June, 1196, he married Agnes de
+Meranie, the lovely daughter of a German prince who, under the title of
+Duke of Meranie, ruled the Tyrol, Istria, and a part of Bohemia. The
+papal menaces had not deterred the king from this insolent act of
+disobedience; and Pope Celestine made no attempt to coerce him by resort
+to more rigorous measures. Ingeburge continued to live in confinement,
+while Philippe enjoyed the love of his new wife, against whom no one
+could lay the guilt of her husband's licentious conduct.
+
+In January, 1198, Pope Celestine was succeeded by Innocent III., one of
+the greatest of the occupants of the chair of St. Peter. He was of an
+inflexible character, not to be turned aside by any considerations of
+policy or of humanity from what he conceived to be his duty; and his
+duty it was, and his right, according to his idea, to dominate the world
+and the kings thereof. When the friends of Ingeburge called her case to
+his attention, Pope Innocent wrote letter after letter of remonstrance
+to Philippe Auguste, "the eldest son of the Church," summoning him to
+return to the paths of duty and relinquish his "concubine", Agnes de
+Meranie. He urged Philippe's spiritual adviser to bring him to reason by
+pious exhortation. All else failing, he sent Cardinal Pierre of Capua as
+a special legate, with injunctions to present the Church's ultimatum to
+the king: he must either take Ingeburge back at once, with all honor, as
+his lawful consort, or the entire kingdom would be put under interdict.
+The legate pleaded and threatened in vain; after a year of exasperating
+evasion the king was still not obedient. The legate at last summoned a
+council and pronounced the interdict, all the prelates receiving
+stringent orders to observe it under pain of suspension. From December,
+1199, to September, 1200, France was under a general interdict.
+
+In the case of Bertha and Robert, the ecclesiastical censures had
+affected only the guilty couple; in the case of Bertrade and Philippe
+I., only the places inhabited by them had been smitten. But the Church
+had now grown stronger; now the whole kingdom was to suffer because of
+the recalcitrant king. Everywhere religious services ceased, for the
+clergy were in sympathy with or afraid of the vigorous statesman now in
+the papal chair. The churches were closed, the altars dismantled, the
+crosses reversed, the bells silent, as during the solemn days in memory
+of Christ's Passion. The accustomed religious exercises ceased; but that
+was only a small part of the horror, for no more sacraments, save
+extreme unction and baptism of infants, could be celebrated. There were
+no marriages: when the king wished to marry his son to the young Blanche
+de Castille he was obliged to go into Normandy, into English territory,
+to have the ceremony performed. There were no more funerals, for the
+Pope forbade burials, whether in hallowed or in unhallowed ground: the
+air was filled with the pestilential stench from unburied corpses. The
+voice of the people rose in wrath against their impious king; it was he
+who was bringing all this woe upon the land. Philippe and Agnes lived
+on, she happy in the love of her king, and in her children, Philippe and
+Marie, he stubbornly resistant. He deprived bishops of their sees and
+sequestered their goods; he punished even laymen for daring to take the
+side of the Pope. But at last he must yield, for his people would endure
+no more.
+
+Ingeburge was taken back as wife and queen, being at last released from
+the chateau of Etampes where she had been confined. But the king, deeply
+in love with Agnes, declared that this recognition of Ingeburge was only
+provisional, since he meant to appeal once more to Rome for an annulment
+of the marriage. The fair Agnes, the victim of these unfortunate
+circumstances, did not long survive the separation from Philippe, whose
+passionate love she returned. A few weeks later she died at Poissi,
+giving birth to a short-lived son named Tristan, the pledge of his
+mother's sorrows. She had given Philippe two children before this, and,
+though her union with the king had been stigmatized as immoral by the
+Church, the Pope recognized the legitimacy of the offspring in November,
+1201. It was her son Philippe, surnamed Hurepel, who became Count de
+Boulogne, and played no pleasing role under Blanche de Castille.
+
+The death of Agnes de Meranie did not tend to soften Philippe's feelings
+toward Ingeburge. She was imprisoned anew, and treated with every
+indignity that could be devised, short of calling down again the wrath
+of Pope Innocent. For eleven years she was treated in this way, and was
+constantly urged, by entreaties and threats, to take the veil, while
+Philippe was continuing his efforts to have the marriage annulled. In
+1212, however, Philippe had need of the friendship of Rome. Ingeburge
+was again taken from her prison at Etampes and received at court: the
+victory of the Pope was complete, as far as the letter of the law was
+concerned. There was never any love between the royal pair, and could
+not be; for between them stood the sad ghost of Agnes de Meranie to
+incite Ingeburge to jealousy and Philippe to fresh aversion.
+
+Ingeburge could never have been happy with Philippe, though he treated
+her more considerately and fairly during the last years of his life.
+When her husband died, in 1223, and his son Louis VIII. came to the
+throne, Ingeburge was nearer peace than she had been since she left her
+native land. We hear, henceforth, almost nothing of her; there was no
+role for a dowager queen, especially one who was a foreigner associated
+with most distressing events for France. We do find her name as one of
+the notabilities in the solemn procession which, on August 2, 1224, went
+from the cathedral of Notre Dame to the Abbey of St. Antoine, to ask of
+the Lord of Hosts for a victory for the arms of Louis VIII. at Rochelle.
+Now and again her name occurs in the accounts of the royal household
+while that careful economist, Blanche de Castille, is governing France.
+She is called "la reine d'Orleans," because she lived at Orleans, part
+of the domain reserved to her as Queen Dowager. Here she lived quietly,
+and let us hope not unhappily, till her death in 1237. She lived in the
+midst of great events in which she could take no part; and only her
+sorrows have preserved for us this fragment of her story.
+
+Before we begin the history of the greatest queen France had yet seen,
+Blanche de Castille, it might be well to note some of the changes in
+social conditions since the age of the early Capetians. These changes
+were, fortunately, all in the direction of amelioration; for the
+civilization of France, of Europe, was taking long strides during the
+eleventh and twelfth centuries, and an advance in civilization involves
+an improvement in the condition of women. Historians usually look at the
+matter from the point of view of man; it must be our endeavor to treat
+of social conditions and their causes rather from the point of view of
+woman.
+
+Glancing at the history of France for a moment, it is easy enough to
+distinguish certain causes or motive forces in the advance in
+civilization. Because it is usually quite overlooked, we shall name
+first the influence of contact with that very society of Provence which
+France was bending her energies to bring to utter ruin. Unquestionably
+the _trouveres_ of northern France owed something of their art to the
+_troubadours_ of southern France, even if the former were more than mere
+imitators. The softening effect of the musical and literary arts
+professed by these poets need not be dwelt upon, but we might remark
+that it was to the ladies of France, in most cases, that the _trouveres_
+sang, and that this conversion of the bard, singing the glories of his
+chief, into the minstrel, still singing of battles but also of fair
+ladies and for the ears of fair ladies, is a fact not lacking
+significance. Woman was no longer the mere toy of the warrior; it is no
+longer Aude, barely mentioned in the _Chanson de Roland_, but Nicolette,
+that fairest, sweetest of the mediaeval heroines of romance, who is of
+more interest than Aucassin in the story. And this little _chantefable_,
+as it is aptly called, of _Aucassin et Nicolette_, is so nearly
+Provencal that Provence has claimed it; it lies on the borderland
+between the manner of the troubadours and that of the _trouveres_. A
+woman is here distinctly a heroine, no longer a mere foil to the hero;
+and the lovely little tale is manifestly intended to please an audience
+of ladies as well as of knights.
+
+We have spoken of this Provencal influence and sought to illustrate what
+may be the method of its working, through the minstrel in the lady's
+bower, but we do not care to lay too much stress upon it, because it may
+not be entirely distinct from a still greater and kindred influence.
+When the hosts of Peter the Hermit, crazed with religious fanaticism
+such as the world sees but once in a great while, straggled back from
+their crusade it might have been thought that they brought with them
+nothing but the memory of their sufferings, or the precious memory of
+those holy places they had journeyed so far and endured so much to see.
+But their crusade had been a success; they had won the holy places from
+the infidel, and after they had achieved their success they had had time
+to look about them upon the new civilization with which they found
+themselves in contact. When they come back to their homes they bring
+enthusiastic memories of the glories of the East, and soon the spirit of
+sheer adventure replaces, almost insensibly, religious feeling, and
+crusade follows crusade, till we find one that does not even pretend to
+go to Palestine, but devotes itself to the conquest of Constantinople,
+full of riches and luxuries undreamed of in France. When Geoffrey
+Villehardouin gives a glowing description of the magnificence of
+Constantinople we see that already there is appreciation of things that
+the first crusaders would have scorned or ruthlessly destroyed. The
+influence of the Crusades in introducing higher standards of domestic
+comfort, greater luxury, greater refinement, has been too often dwelt
+upon to need further notice here.
+
+The cause of woman and of civilization was helped in another way by the
+Crusades. While the warlike barons found a vent for their surplus
+fighting blood in smiting the infidel and robbing the Greek, there was
+peace at home, for private wars and feuds ceased. The barons, moreover,
+needed money to continue their sojourn in the army of Christ; and we
+hear that in the splendor of the preparations for that Crusade in which
+Eleanor took part the nobles of France vied with each other till they
+were almost ruined. To get this money they sold freedom to their slaves,
+immunity from vexatious feudal rights to their serfs, privileges and
+charters to their burgesses. While they themselves were spending their
+money and acquiring expensive tastes and refined ideas in contact with
+the Greeks and Saracens, their subjects were acquiring a greater degree
+of freedom, and their king, if he were a wise one, was consolidating his
+kingdom and girding up his loins for more effective resistance to their
+turbulence. The strength of the monarchy increased as the power of the
+independent baronage decreased, and the strength of the monarchy meant
+greater tranquillity, greater respect for law, and the fostering of
+conditions favorable to the growth of commerce.
+
+Manners were still rough and cruel, for the Crusades had not tamed the
+ferocity of the European heroes. We hear that, when Saladin refused to
+pay the enormous ransom demanded for the town of Acre, Richard Coeur de
+Lion put to death the two thousand six hundred captives whom he held as
+hostages, and the Duke of Burgundy did likewise with his captives. But
+in France there was getting to be less and less opportunity for the
+display of wanton cruelty toward the lower orders of society. The
+seigneur still believed in the truth of the old proverb:
+
+        "Oignez vilain, il vous poindra;
+        Poignez vilain, il vous oindra."
+
+(Stroke a villain, and he will sting you; sting a villain, and he will
+stroke you); but the number of serfs was constantly diminishing. The
+great communal movement emancipated the bourgeois of the towns; whole
+villages bought their freedom; the monarchy favored enfranchisement and
+gave the example in freeing serfs here and there, till, in 1315, all the
+serfs of the royal domain were set free, and the great doctrine was
+proclaimed: _Selon le droit de nature, chacun doit nattre
+franc_--"according to the law of nature, everyone should be born free."
+
+The general improvement in conditions affected more visibly the
+bourgeois class. We find, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that
+the members of this class are beginning to build large, solid houses of
+stone, with ogival windows, and sometimes with lofty towers and
+crenelated battlements. As a class they become richer and obtain
+recognition. When Philippe Auguste contemplated paving some of the
+streets of Paris--they had been mere roads of mud--he sent for the rich
+citizens to ask their assistance. One of these, Richard de Poissi, is
+said to have contributed eleven thousand marks in silver. Then the
+guilds of the tradesmen become wealthy and exercise considerable
+political power. It is in the reign of Saint Louis that the trade guilds
+of Paris become so numerous that Etienne Boileau compiles a _Livre des
+metiers_, containing the statutes of the greater number of them.
+
+In the dress of all classes above the abjectly poor there was a tendency
+toward greater show, vainly repressed during part of the thirteenth
+century, but continuing to increase even under repression. The standard
+costume during the whole period of the Crusades was indeed plain, and
+very similar for men and for women. On their heads ordinary women wore
+only a sort of coif, or the cowl attached to the long robe or gown,
+though there were a few ladies of fashion who scandalized the community
+by wearing tall, pointed bonnets, sometimes cone-shaped, sometimes with
+two horns, and with a veil hanging from the tip to form a sort of
+wimple. The chief article in the dress of both sexes was the garment
+called a cotte-hardie, consisting of a long robe reaching to the feet
+and confined at the waist by a girdle. The sleeves of the cotte-hardie
+were, among sober-minded dames, rather close fitting and plain; fashion
+had them made absurdly large, flaring at the wrist to many times the
+dimensions of the upper part, and sometimes so long as not only to cover
+the whole hand, but to trail upon the ground. Over the _cotte-hardie_
+was worn the _surcot_, a sort of tunic, shorter than the undergarment,
+and either without sleeves or with elbow sleeves. On grand occasions a
+handsome mantle was worn, but the use of this was generally restricted
+to noble ladies. The shoes were usually simple, lacing higher on the leg
+than what we now call shoes; sometimes, however, they were made of gaily
+colored leathers, richly embroidered, or even of cloth of gold, damask,
+or the like. The days of high heels had not yet come, and women's shoes
+seem never to have been quite so outrageous as those long pointed shoes
+worn by the dandies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
+
+It was at the other end of the costume, the headgear, that women
+displayed their extravagance. Fearfully and wonderfully were the
+headdresses made, judging from the pictures in manuscripts and from the
+indignation of the satirists. The modest bonnet sprouted horns of
+alarming shape and proportions. "When ladies come to festivals," says a
+thirteenth century satirist, "they look at each other's heads, and carry
+_bosses_ like horned beasts; if any one is without horns, she becomes an
+object of derision." Not content with having betrayed man by her
+flirtation with Lucifer in Eden, Eve must now wear on her head the very
+mark of the beast. No text served as the basis for sermons with more
+frequency or more delight than one attacking the horns of the ladies.
+One preacher advised his hearers to cry out: _Hurte, belier!_--"Beware
+the ram!" when one of these horned monsters approached, and promised ten
+days' absolution to those who would do so. "By the faith I owe Saint
+Mathurin," exclaims the monkish satirist, "they make themselves horned
+with platted hemp or linen, and so counterfeit dumb beasts; they carry
+great masses of other people's hair on their heads." The author of the
+_Romance of the Rose_ describes with great unction the gorget, or
+neckcloth, hanging from the horns and twisted two or three times around
+the neck. These horns, he says, are evidently designed to wound the men.
+"I know not whether they call those things that sustain their horns
+gibbets or corbels,... but I venture to say Saint Elizabeth did not get
+to heaven by wearing such things. Moreover, they are a great encumbrance
+(owing to the hair piled up, etc.), for between the gorget and the
+temple and horns there is quite enough room for a rat to pass, or the
+biggest weasel 'twixt here and Arras."
+
+Neither ridicule nor threats of eternal damnation, however, made any
+impression on the daughters of Eve, and the horns continued to adorn
+their fair heads. The other parts of the costume, as we have said, were
+usually simple. The robe, or _cotte-hardie_, and the _surcot_ were
+generally of plain cloth of solid color; but as wealth increased, the
+use of expensive materials became more and more common, and silk, cloth
+of gold, and velvet appeared on various parts of the dress, as well as a
+profusion of jewels. A short passage from the description of the costume
+of the queen in Philippe de Beaumanoir's _La Manekine_ may serve to show
+the utmost that imagination could devise in the way of dress, for, of
+course, the costume of the heroines of romance is always some degrees
+more elegant than that to which the fair readers are accustomed.
+
+"The queen arose early in the morning, well dressed and richly jewelled.
+(Her costume) was laced with a thick gold thread, with two big rubies to
+every finger's breadth: no matter how dark the skies, one could see
+clearly by the light of these jewels. She clothed her beautiful body in
+a robe of cloth of gold, with fur sewn all about it. So fine was the
+cloth of her girdle that I can scarcely describe it. There were upon it
+many little platines of gold linked together with emeralds beautiful and
+costly, and one sapphire there was in the clasp, worth full a hundred
+marks in silver. Upon her breast she wore a brooch of gold set with many
+precious stones. Over her shoulders and about her neck she had fastened
+a mantle of cloth of gold, no man ever saw more beautiful. Her furs were
+no common, moth-eaten things, but sable, which makes people look
+beautiful. At her girdle she wore a purse, in all the world there is
+none more elegant. Upon her head rested a crown whose like was not to be
+found; for one gazed at it in wonder and admiration of the beautiful
+stones in it, stones of many virtues: emeralds, sapphires, rubies,
+jacinths,... never was a more beautiful one seen."
+
+Though the number of jewels is probably magnified, the essential
+features of the costume correspond to what a lady of fashion would have
+liked to wear in the year 1250. The mantle, being regarded as suitable
+for full dress occasions, was much ornamented. In the _Roman de la
+Violette_ (about 1225) we find this description of a lady's mantle: "She
+wore a mantle greener than the leaves and trimmed with ermine. Upon it
+were embroidered little golden flowerets, cunningly worked; each one had
+attached to it, so hidden as to be invisible, a little bell. When the
+wind blew against the mantle, sweetly sounded the bells. I give you my
+word that nor harp nor rote nor vielle ever gave forth so sweet a sound
+as these silver chimes."
+
+Not all ladies, of course, were so gorgeously attired, and even among
+the noble ladies of the land the delicacy of manners did not always
+match the elegance of the attire. To get some idea of what a fine lady
+did, we may look at some of the things she is warned against doing in a
+sort of book on deportment, of the thirteenth century,--Robert de
+Blois's _Chastiement des dames._
+
+        "Cest livre petit priseront
+        dames, s'amendees n'en sont;
+        por ce vueil je cortoisement
+        enseignier les dames comment
+        eles se doivent contenir,
+        en lor aler, en lor venir,
+        en lor tesir, en lor parler."
+
+(Ladies will think but little of this book if they are not improved by
+it; therefore will I politely teach the ladies how they should conduct
+themselves, in their goings, in their comings, in silence, and when
+talking.) This last item, he remarks, requires much care. "Do not talk
+too much," he continues, "especially do not boast of your love affairs;
+and do not be too free in your conduct with men when playing games, lest
+they be encouraged to take liberties with you. When you go to church,
+take good care not to trot or run, but walk straight, and do not go too
+far in advance of the company you are with. Do not let your glances rove
+here and there, but look straight ahead of you; and salute courteously
+everyone you meet, for courtesy costs little. Let no man put his hand
+upon your breast, or touch you at all, or kiss you; for such
+familiarities are dangerous and unbecoming, save with the one man whom
+you love. Of this lover, too, you must not talk too much, nor must you
+glance often at men, or accept presents from them. Beware of exposing
+your body out of vanity, and do not undress in the presence of men. You
+must not dispute and get in the habit of scolding, nor must you swear.
+Above all, eschew eating greedily at the table, and getting drunk, for
+this latter practice is fraught with danger to you. Unless your face is
+ugly or deformed, do not cover it in the presence of gentlemen, who like
+to look at the beautiful." One can guess that this rule was rigidly
+obeyed; those succeeding touch upon matters still more delicate. "If
+your breath is bad, take care not to breathe in people's faces, and eat
+aniseed, fennel, and cummin for breakfast. Keep your hands clean, cut
+your nails so that they be not permitted to grow beyond the tip of the
+finger and harbor dirt. It is not polite to gaze into a house when you
+are passing, for people may do many things in their houses that they
+would not have seen; it would be well, therefore, when you go into
+another person's house, to pause a moment on the sill and cough or speak
+loud, so that they may know you are coming."
+
+Before we give Robert de Blois's directions for table manners it may be
+well to say a few words about the table. Among the common people the
+table itself was little more than a rude board on trestles, with benches
+or stools along the side and with places scooped out to hold the portion
+of food allotted to each person. Among the more well-to-do classes,
+however, the table was a more ornamental piece of furniture. The benches
+or stools still remained, but the rest was more civilized. The food,
+consisting of vegetables, roast fowls, boiled meats, and fish was served
+in large earthenware platters. There were no forks, but spoons and
+fingers were freely used as well as knives, each guest frequently using
+his own knife or dagger. As the guests had to help themselves, often
+with their fingers, out of the common serving platters, there was some
+reason in the ceremony which preceded each meal; this was the washing of
+hands, for which the trumpeter sounded a call. Every gentleman had the
+right to _faire corner l'eau_, as it was called, that is, to have his
+trumpeter sound the call for washing hands. When this call sounded the
+pages of the establishment bore the ewer to the ladies, and servants of
+less pretension did likewise for the gentlemen. Napkins were provided
+for drying one's hands after this, but the time had not yet come when
+there were regular table napkins; instead, each wiped his hands or mouth
+upon the tablecloth, and his knife upon a piece of bread. The company
+sat at the table in couples, a gentleman and a lady together. This means
+more than may be apparent at first sight, for one must remember that
+there was usually but one drinking cup for each couple and that they ate
+from a common plate. The plate, as we ventured to call it, was regularly
+a large piece of bread, flat and round, which served to hold the food
+and absorb the gravy. At the end of the meal this bread, called _pain
+tranchoir_, was given to the poor, with the other scraps from the table.
+It took a careful hostess properly to pair off the couples, for it must
+have been very embarrassing for either lady or gentleman to have to
+_manger a la meme ecuelle_ (eat out of the same porringer) and drink out
+of the same cup with one personally distasteful. In the romance of
+_Perceforest_ we find the description of a banquet where there were
+eight hundred knights, "and there was not a one who did not have lady or
+maiden to eat from his porringer." There was great profusion if not
+great delicacy upon the table; we shall content ourselves with echoing
+what Philippe de Beaumanoir says: "If I undertook to describe the dishes
+they had I should stop here forever.... Each had as much as he wished
+and whatever he wished: meats, fowls, venison, or fish cooked in many
+styles."
+
+[Illustration 4: LADIES HUNTING.
+After the painting by Henri Genois.
+Sometimes brawls followed the too free use of wine, as one romance tells
+us "you might see them throw at each other cheeses, and big
+quartern-loaves, and hunks of meat, and sharp steel knives." But
+sometimes the ladies strolled off into the gardens and played
+games--blindman's-buff, or frog-in-the-middle, or the like--or sang to
+the harp, or sewed. A great deal of time, indeed, was spent out of
+doors, not only in the gentler field sports, such as hawking, in which
+ladies participated, but also in the mere routine of daily life. In the
+romances many a scene of revelry as well as of love making takes place
+under the trees; and the ladies are not always idling away their time,
+either; for we find them spinning, embroidering, or at least making
+garlands of flowers.]
+
+Upon a table so appointed and served we can understand that some of the
+cautions of Robert de Blois to the ladies would be most useful. "In
+eating you must avoid much laughing or talking. If you eat with another
+(out of the same _ecuelle_), turn the nicest bits to him, and do not
+pick out the finest and largest for yourself, which is not good manners.
+Moreover, no one should try to devour a choice bit which is too large or
+too hot, for fear of choking or burning herself.... Each time you drink,
+wipe your mouth well, that no grease may go into the wine, which is very
+unpleasant to the person who drinks after you. But when you wipe your
+mouth after drinking, do not wipe your eyes or nose with the tablecloth,
+and take care not to get your hands too greasy or let your mouth spill
+too much." The really well-bred lady, then, must be like Chaucer's
+Prioress:
+
+        "At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle;
+        She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,
+        Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.
+        Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
+        Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.
+        In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest.
+        Hire over lippe wiped she so clene,
+        That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene
+        Of grese, when she dronken hadde hire draught.
+        Ful semely after hire mete she raught."
+
+One might almost fancy that old Dan Chaucer, the first humorist of
+modern times, was copying from and slyly poking fun at our friend Robert
+de Blois and his fine lady.
+
+        "Quant mengie eurent, si laverent.
+        Li menestrel dont en alerent
+        Cascuns a son mestier servir."
+
+(When they had eaten, they washed their hands; then the minstrels began,
+each doing that which he could do best.) The tables cleared, the guests,
+the ladies not excepted, watched the tricks of the jugglers and
+tumblers, listened to the minstrels, or told tales, nearly all of which
+were horribly coarse. Sometimes brawls followed the too free use of
+wine, as one romance tells us "you might see them throw at each other
+cheeses, and big quartern-loaves, and hunks of meat, and sharp steel
+knives." But sometimes the ladies strolled off into the gardens and
+played games--blindman's-buff, or frog-in-the-middle, or the like--or
+sang to the harp, or sewed. A great deal of time, indeed, was spent out
+of doors, not only in the gentler field sports, such as hawking, in
+which ladies participated, but also in the mere routine of daily life.
+In the romances many a scene of revelry as well as of love making takes
+place under the trees; and the ladies are not always idling away their
+time, either; for we find them spinning, embroidering, or at least
+making garlands of flowers. We have a pretty picture in the _Roman de la
+Violette_ of a burgher's daughter "who sat in her father's chamber,
+working a stole and amice in silk, with care and skill, and embroidering
+upon her work many a little cross and star, singing the while this
+spinning song (_chanson a toile_)."
+
+With all this romance and poetry there went a freedom of intercourse
+between the sexes that not infrequently led to serious immorality. Not
+only did the ladies play rather rough games and listen to very vulgar
+stories with the men, but they received visits from men in their
+bed-chambers, _tete-a-tete_. More surprising still, ladies sometimes
+visited men in this way, without its being considered a serious breach
+of etiquette, as one can see in the fashionable romance of _Jean de
+Dammartin et Blonde d'Oxford_. The ladies, when they really fell in
+love, did not attempt to conceal the passion from any feeling of shame
+or delicacy; nay, they were commonly very forward, and became ardent
+suitors sometimes, with less of restraint in word and deed than was
+shown by the chivalrous knight under similar circumstances. Indeed, the
+knight had need to be a veritable Joseph to withstand temptation, if
+there were many scenes in real life like that described, for example, in
+the romance of _Amis et Amiles_, where the good knight is pursued by a
+demoiselle who positively insists on loving him.
+
+The hours of the lady's day were regulated, we may suppose, by the
+proverb which says:
+
+        "Lever a cinq, diner a neuf,
+        Souper a cinq, coucher a neuf,
+        Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf."
+
+(Rising at five, dining at nine, supping at five, sleeping at nine,
+makes one live to ninety-and-nine.) Sometimes, instead of rising at five
+and dining at nine, it is rising at six and dining at ten, supping at
+six and to bed by ten; but we are not, in this case, promised the
+ninety-and-nine years of life. Dinner between nine and ten, and other
+meals at suitable hours, seems to have been the rule in France even
+until the sixteenth century. Breakfast was a very uncertain meal (think
+of breakfast before a nine o'clock dinner!), but supper was almost as
+elaborate as dinner. As candles and lamps were very expensive, being
+regarded as almost a luxury, there was some reason in the early hours
+for meals. For the same reason, in summer, when there were no fires to
+supply light, most people went to bed as soon as it grew dark. The lady
+of the house is told, in a French housekeeper's book of the fourteenth
+century, to see that the candles are not wasted. She must go around to
+see that all fires are out and the house properly closed and that the
+servants are in bed. These latter are to place the candle allowed them
+on the floor, at a safe distance from the bed, and the lady must take
+care "to teach them to put out their candle with the mouth, or with the
+hand before getting in bed, and not by throwing their chemises over
+it"--servants, mistress, and all, be it remembered, slept naked.
+
+The kind of life we have been describing, the washing of hands, the
+plentiful food, the wine, the amusements, the rich costumes--all these
+are things belonging to the lady. The woman of the poorer classes, the
+laboring woman, had no such comforts; lucky was she, indeed, if she had
+enough of coarse food and coarse clothing for herself and children. The
+mediaeval moralists noted the inequality of the classes, and one of them
+compares the fare of the rich, which we have mentioned, with that of the
+poor: "There was not one among them, great or small, who did not have a
+fine appetite for dry (black) bread, and garlic, and salt; nor did they
+eat anything else with these, neither mutton, nor beef, nor a bit of
+goose or young spring chicken. And after the meal they took up the basin
+with both hands, and drank water." Having attempted to give some idea of
+the life of a lady of the time, we may now turn to the life of Blanche
+de Castille, the first lady of France in the second quarter of the
+thirteenth century. For the first time we shall find a woman whose
+history will include a large part of the history of France during her
+period. As a late biographer, Elie Berger, _Histoire de Blanche de
+Castille_, says: "Her life, during a great part of the thirteenth
+century, is the life of France itself, the France to which she gave
+peace; her history is the history of the power of the throne, of the
+monarchy, outside of which there was then no France, no _patrie_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BLANCHE DE CASTILLE AS REGENT OF FRANCE
+
+IN a preceding chapter we saw how old Queen Eleanor was despatched into
+Spain to bring her granddaughter, Blanche de Castille, as a bride for
+Louis of France, and how Eleanor fell ill on the way, and handed over
+her charge to Elie de Malmort, Archbishop of Bordeaux. The child whom
+Eleanor was bringing back as a sacrifice to peace between John and
+Philippe Auguste was then but a little over twelve years of age. Blanche
+was born in the early part of the year 1188, at Palencia. Her father, a
+good man and a brave warrior, was Alphonso VIII., surnamed the Noble,
+King of Castille; and her mother was Eleanor of England, daughter of
+Henry II. and Eleanor of Guienne. Fortunately, this latter lady seems to
+have inherited none of the bad traits of her mother and namesake; at
+least contemporary accounts call her "chaste, noble, and of good
+counsel." The family of the young Princess Blanche was large and of
+illustrious connections. We need not note those of the direct
+Plantagenet line, which are sufficiently familiar, but on her father's
+side we may mention her eldest sister, Berengere, who, married to her
+cousin, the King of Leon, had been forced to separate from him in spite
+of their love, in spite of their children, in spite of important reasons
+of state. Queen Berengere was of a character, it appears, very much like
+that of her sister, and there was much love between the two. Another
+sister, but a year older than Blanche, married Alphonso of Portugal,
+whose brother was that Count Ferrand de Flandre defeated at Bouvines by
+Philippe Auguste and kept in captivity for many years. Of this sister a
+curious story is told.
+
+It appears that, in the negotiations between John and Philippe Auguste,
+the name of the Princess of Castille who should become the wife of
+Prince Louis had not been specified. The King of Castille had two
+unmarried daughters, Urraque and Blanche. When the ambassadors of France
+came, accompanied by Queen Eleanor, the two princesses were brought
+before them. They chose Urraque, as the elder and the more beautiful;
+but when they heard her name they protested that would never do, it was
+too hard for the people of France to learn to pronounce; and so the
+choice fell upon Blanche.
+
+After being conducted to Normandy, where was the court of her uncle,
+John, the little princess was married immediately. The treaty for whose
+ratification and observance she was a sort of pledge was signed on May
+22, 1200. John ceded nearly all that Philippe could ask, and bestowed
+twenty thousand marks sterling upon the young husband. The next day the
+ceremony was performed at Portmort, on the right bank of the Seine, by
+the Archbishop of Bordeaux, in the presence of a great assemblage of
+barons and ecclesiastics. The young prince and his bride could not be
+married on French soil by reason of the interdict then in force against
+his father for repudiating Ingeburge; hence the choice of Norman soil
+and of such an out of the way place. The prince, aged only twelve years
+and six months, proceeded with Blanche direct to Paris. There is no
+record of the usual festivities accompanying a royal marriage, despite
+the accounts of some modern historians, who claim that there were grand
+tourneys, and that Louis was wounded in one of them.
+
+In one so young as Blanche it is useless to look for the traits of the
+grown woman; we might conjecture much, but it would be in the light of
+after events. To those about her at this time Blanche seemed a beautiful
+girl, deserving of the flattering play upon words which her name
+suggested. She was _la princesse candide_ not only in looks but in
+conduct, and won the devoted love of her boy husband, who seems to have
+been himself of a lovable disposition. It was at his request that Hugh
+of Lincoln, at that time in great repute, visited Blanche, whom he found
+in tears and managed to console. But the times were troublous, and we
+may well suppose that there was little chance for the fostering of quiet
+domestic virtues when one had been forced to marry merely for reasons of
+state. It is rumored, though not positively confirmed, that the crafty
+King of France made use of his young daughter-in-law to solicit from
+King John another slice of Normandy, which John dared not refuse.
+Whether this be true or not, it is at least certain that neither
+immediately nor ultimately did the marriage of Blanche de Castille help
+the English Plantagenets. For John quarrelled with Alphonso, Blanche's
+father, and the two were at war with intervals of truce, between 1204
+and 1208, the subject of dispute being Gascony. Blanche naturally sided
+with her father rather than with her uncle, and when she bore heirs who
+might inherit the crown of France, made stronger by the accession of the
+Norman lands which had been taken from John and given to her husband, it
+is easy to see that her sympathies would be with her adopted country.
+
+Blanche's first child a daughter, who lived but a short time, and whose
+name is not known was born in 1205. On September 9, 1209, she gave birth
+to a son, hailed as the heir to the crown, and named Philippe, in honor
+of his grandfather. But this child, too, lived only a few years, dying
+when between eight and nine. In the interval, on January 26, 1213,
+Blanche had borne twins, Alphonse and Jean, who did not live long. Other
+domestic joys and sorrows were coming to the young princess. Her father
+won a great victory over the Moors, at Las Navas de Tolosa, July 16,
+1212, and her sister Berengere wrote her the glad news: "It is my
+pleasure to inform you of joyful news; thanks be to God, from whom all
+good comes, our king, our lord, our father has vanquished on the field
+of battle the Emir Almounmenim, by which, I think, he has won very great
+honor; for until this time it has never happened that a king of Morocco
+has been defeated in a pitched battle." Within two years after this the
+gallant Alphonso was dead, and one month later his wife Eleanor followed
+him to the tomb.
+
+Father and mother had thus both been taken from Blanche, while she was
+far from them, in a strange land. But her new country was winning a hold
+upon her heart; in the war then waging between her Uncle John and her
+father-in-law, all her interests and all her affection were on the side
+of France. And now another son was born, on Saint Mark's day, April 25,
+1215, at the royal residence of Poissy. The child was named Louis, and
+his birth seems to have created but little interest, as was natural,
+since the older brother, Philippe, was still living. But this child
+became the famous Saint Louis, and pious legends must needs gather
+around his birth and his infancy: it was at the special intervention of
+Saint Dominique, whose prayers Blanche had asked, that this son was
+born; then, at the time of his birth, the pious queen learned that, out
+of consideration for her, the bells of the church of Poissy had been
+silenced, so she had herself removed, though then in childbed. The piety
+of Blanche was sincere but never exaggerated; it is easy to see in such
+a legend the art of those who thought it fitting that a saint, even
+before birth, should allow nothing to interfere with the services of the
+church. In like manner Blanche's extreme jealousy in regard to her baby
+is a fiction that has been often repeated. Louis was given to a nurse,
+Marie la Picarde, and there is no truth in the story which represents
+Blanche as snatching him from the breast of one of her ladies and
+forcing the infant to disgorge the milk of the stranger.
+
+The little Louis was not two years old when the English barons, in
+revolt against John, called his father to their aid and promised him the
+throne of England, to which he had no claim except through Blanche.
+Louis went to England, in spite of the anathemas of the Pope against all
+who dared oppose John. Successful at first against the English king, the
+French prince began to suffer serious reverses when the hated John was
+succeeded by his son, Henry, against whom the English barons had no just
+cause of complaint. Philippe Auguste had been from the beginning too
+politic to lend his son open assistance, or even to sanction his
+enterprise. The task of collecting and sending him reinforcements
+devolved upon Blanche. For the first time the full energy of her
+character is displayed. A chronicler, almost contemporary, records an
+alleged interview between her and Philippe Auguste, who, deaf to his
+son's entreaties for help, had declared that he would do nothing, and
+that he did not care to risk excommunication. "When Madame Blanche (it
+is by this title that she is referred to even when queen) heard of this
+she came to the king and said: 'Would you let my lord, your son, perish
+thus in a strange land? Sire, for God's sake, remember that he is to
+reign after you; send him what he needs, at least the revenues of his
+own patrimony.' 'Certes,' said the king, 'I will do nothing, Blanche.'
+'Nothing, sire?' 'No, truly.' 'In God's name, then,' replied Blanche, 'I
+know what I will do.' 'And what will you do?' 'By the holy Mother of
+God, I have beautiful children by my husband; I will put them in pledge,
+and well I know some who will lend me on their security.' Then she
+rushed madly from the king's presence; and he, when he saw her go,
+believed that she had spoken but the truth. He had her called back, and
+said to her: 'Blanche, I will give you of my treasure as much as you
+would have; do whatever you wish with it; but rest assured that I myself
+will send him nothing.' 'Sire,' said Madame Blanche, 'you say well.' And
+then the great treasure was given to her, and she sent it to her lord."
+
+The details of this conversation may not be absolutely accurate, but the
+facts seem to have been correctly recorded. Blanche went to Calais and
+there established headquarters for collecting provisions, munitions, and
+a small army for her husband. She despatched an expedition to his aid,
+the army being under command of Robert de Courtenay, the fleet under
+that of the famous pirate and freebooter Eustache le Moine. But the
+fleet was destroyed by the English off Sandwich, August 24, 1217, and
+there was no other course open to Louis than to make the best terms he
+could with Henry III. and return to France. Blanche had displayed an
+energy that elicited the admiration of her contemporaries, but for the
+next few years she had no part in the larger events of history.
+
+Domestic duties, domestic sorrows, indeed, must have absorbed a good
+deal of the energy of this devoted wife and mother. In September, 1216,
+her son Robert had been born. In 1218 she lost Philippe, her oldest son.
+Three other children came in rapid succession: John (1219); Alphonse
+(1220); Philippe Dagobert (1222). Of these only Alphonse was destined to
+live to manhood. The anxious mother, having lost so many of her
+children, would make vows for their recovery when any of them fell ill.
+Fearing that she might have forgotten to fulfil some of these vows,
+often made under stress of anguish, she sought and obtained from the
+Pope (1220) permission to perform charities in place of trying to fulfil
+her vows in all cases.
+
+In her native land, too, there were events to claim her attention. Her
+brother, Henry, having been accidentally killed after a short reign,
+Queen Berengere was the next heiress; but she refused the crown for
+herself, placing it upon the head of her son, Ferdinand III., whom she
+continued to counsel and assist very much as Blanche was later to
+counsel her son. It is reported that the discontented subjects of
+Ferdinand offered the crown to Blanche. Whether this be true or not, she
+would never have taken sides against her sister Berengere.
+
+On July 14, 1223, the great King Philippe Auguste died, and on August
+6th Queen Blanche and King Louis VIII. were crowned with solemn
+ceremonial. The Abbot of Saint-Remi, escorted by two hundred knights,
+brought the sacred ampulla to the cathedral of Rheims, and the
+archbishop anointed the royal pair. The king's sword was borne in the
+procession by his half-brother, Philippe Hurepel, son of Agnes de
+Meranie and Philippe Auguste. There were great festivities, lasting
+eight days, and the new king and queen manumitted serfs and showed mercy
+upon prisoners and captives. Queen Blanche still remains in the
+background during the brief reign of Louis VIII.; but we may note that
+she used her influence to secure the liberation of Ferrand de Portugal,
+Count of Flanders, who had been in captivity since the battle of
+Bouvines. Released from prison in 1227, Ferrand lived to become one of
+Blanche's most steadfast and useful allies.
+
+Louis VIII. died in November, 1226, leaving Blanche with eight children
+to care for; in addition to those already mentioned there were Isabelle,
+Etienne, and Charles, all born since the accession of Louis. The king,
+who had forced the submission of Languedoc during the expedition on
+which he died, made his barons swear to be true to his son Louis.
+Realizing that his devoted wife could not reach him before his death, he
+provided as best he could for her. With perfect confidence in her, a
+confidence fully justified by the event, he declared that Prince Louis,
+his heir, as well as the whole kingdom and all the rest of his children
+should be under the tutelage of Queen Blanche until they came of age; to
+this important portion of the king's will some of the great barons and
+high church dignitaries were witnesses.
+
+Blanche and her husband had loved each other tenderly and faithfully,
+and at first the widowed queen was looked upon with compassion. She was
+on her way to Louis's bedside, the younger children in a carriage and
+Prince Louis riding ahead, when she was met by the news of his death.
+Her grief was pitiable; but her sense of duty toward her children and
+her realization of the difficulties and dangers of her position gave her
+courage. She was not the kind of woman to succumb under grief for the
+loss of a well-loved husband or anxiety at finding herself obliged to
+govern a kingdom whose king was yet a boy.
+
+At first the old retainers of Louis were around her and faithful to her.
+She was politic enough to win the support of the only prince of the
+blood, Philippe, surnamed Hurepel, on account of the great mat of shaggy
+hair he had inherited from his father, Philippe Auguste. Ferrand, Count
+of Flanders, was her friend, and she could rely upon the support of most
+of the clergy, and especially upon that of the papal legate, Romain
+Frangipani, Cardinal of Saint Angelo. Her surest allies, however, were
+the immediate servants of the crown: the chancellor, Guerin, who was
+unfortunately not to live long; Archambaud de Bourbon, Count Amaury de
+Montfort, the chamberlain, Barthelemy de Roye, and the noble constable,
+Mathieu de Montmorency. With the aid of such friends, Blanche began her
+duties as regent.
+
+How long this regency was to last, how long it really did last, are
+matters not altogether easy to determine. In the first place, there were
+precedents, in the royal line as well as in feudal annals, for
+considering the age of majority as fourteen years; but there seems to
+have been authority equally as good for holding to the age of
+twenty-one. Louis was in his twelfth year when his father died. Blanche
+continued to act as regent for about ten years, and there was no protest
+based on the pretext that the young king should have been considered a
+major at fourteen years.
+
+As soon as possible, Blanche had Louis crowned, a ceremony which did not
+imply that he was to be considered out of her tutelage, but which did
+give him a certain amount of prestige and consequent protection. The
+coronation, which took place on November 29, 1226, at Rheims, was but
+poorly attended by the nobles. Already there was discontent, and the
+great house of Dreux, led by the crafty and unscrupulous Pierre
+Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was at the head of the disaffected. Count
+Thibaud de Champagne, son of Blanche's first cousin, would have come to
+the coronation, but Blanche ordered the gates of Rheims closed against
+him; for it was currently rumored, though the rumor was entirely without
+justification, that Louis VIII. had died very suddenly because of poison
+administered by Thibaud. But, with or without the presence of the great
+barons, Louis IX. was crowned, and Blanche made for herself and her son
+such friends as she could.
+
+In England Henry III., always restive under the thought of the losses
+sustained by his father in France, was continually scheming to regain
+the lost territories. He formed alliances with some of the chief lords
+of Poitou, entered into negotiations for the hand of Yolande, daughter
+of Pierre Mauclerc, and made abortive, but nevertheless startling,
+preparations for a descent upon the coast of France. His allies among
+the discontented French nobility took up arms, inspired in part by the
+jealous Isabelle d'Angouleme, who had been the queen of John Lackland
+and was now Countess of Marche. Blanche promptly summoned the ban royal
+to assemble at Tours, whither she went with Louis in February, 1227.
+Count Thibaud de Champagne had been in treaty with the rebels and was
+marching with his forces as if to join them in Poitou. Tradition says
+that he was diverted by a secret message from Blanche; at any rate, he
+suddenly turned in his march and came to Tours, did homage to the boy
+king, and was graciously received by the queen regent. The defection of
+Thibaud upset the plans of the rebels, who quarrelled among themselves.
+Many of them came, one by one, to submit to Louis IX., and hostilities
+were suspended between the French and Richard of Cornwall, brother and
+representative of Henry III.
+
+During the truce which followed, Blanche was enabled to prosecute the
+unfinished war in Languedoc against Raymond VII. of Toulouse and the
+Albigensian heretics. One is surprised to find that certain churches in
+France refused at first to grant the king subsidies to conduct this
+crusade, and that it was only by the vigorous measures of Cardinal
+Remain that they were at length compelled to yield.
+
+The turbulent barons could not endure being governed by a woman. If
+Blanche had been a weak ruler the indignity of bearing her rule would
+have been atoned for by the laxity of that rule; but she was strong, and
+could control the barons, who accordingly hated her. Pierre Mauclerc and
+his party declared that France was not meant to be ruled by a foreign
+woman; they called her "Dame Hersent," like the she-wolf in the _Roman
+du Renart_; they circulated odious calumnies against her. The most
+noteworthy of these calumnies is that which connected her name with that
+of Thibaud de Champagne as an adulteress. They said that Blanche had
+been his paramour even during the life of her husband; nay, that she had
+connived at the murder of her husband, poisoned by Thibaud. They alleged
+that she was, moreover, secretly sending the royal treasure into Spain;
+that she was so vile that one lover did not suffice; that she had
+illicit relations with Cardinal Remain. It is needless to say that there
+is no foundation for these tales; they are the tax that a good woman
+paid for being at the same time great.
+
+The malcontents plotted to separate the king from his mother, and
+determined to carry him off by force. Blanche and Louis were near
+Orleans when warned of the danger. Hastening toward Paris, they were
+forced to take refuge in the strong castle of Montlhery, for the rebels
+were assembled in force at Corbeil, between them and Paris. Blanche
+appealed to the citizens of Paris to safeguard the king's approach.
+There could not have been a better testimonial to the popularity of the
+royal family and, incidentally, to the good government enjoyed under
+Blanche than the response made by these _bourgeois_. The militia of the
+surrounding country having been gathered in Paris, the combined forces
+of the city and country marched to Montlhery, deploying along the route.
+Long after this Saint Louis used to tell Joinville of his triumphal
+entry: "He told me," says this chronicler, "that from Montlhery, the
+road was filled with men with arms and men without arms, up to the gates
+of Paris, and that all shouted and called upon the Lord to grant him
+long and happy life, and to guard and protect him against his enemies."
+The nobles were balked, and retired from Corbeil.
+
+The barons, though temporarily disheartened, were by no means reduced to
+peaceful submission. England was still in a threatening attitude; while
+the long and relentless war against the Albigenses was dragging on, with
+success now on this side, now on that. Blanche had need to fortify
+herself as wisely as she could. She sought the support of the bourgeois.
+The citizens of Limoges and of Saint-Junien in the Limousin, in charters
+granted in 1228, swore fealty to the queen as well as to the king.
+Cardinal Remain, at Blanche's instance, came back to France as legate;
+she found his advice, and the prestige of the papal authority, of
+material assistance. After some negotiation, the truce with England was
+renewed for a year, from July, 1228, to July, 1229.
+
+Philippe Hurepel, who had been faithful for a time to the interests of
+his sister-in-law and her son, displayed discontent, and now went over
+to the side of the rebels. It is said that he even had an eye on the
+throne, and that the barons had some notion of trying to set up
+Enguerrand de Coucy as king that Coucy who was the head of the house
+with the famous motto:
+
+        "Je ne suis roi, ne due, ne prince, ne comte aussi:
+            Je suis le sire de Coucy."
+
+Before actual hostilities began, Blanche had required and received new
+oaths of fealty from the communes of the royal domain north of the
+Seine, as far as Flanders. Magistrates of Amiens, Compiegne, Laon,
+Peronne, and a host of other places, swore to defend the king, Queen
+Blanche, and her children. The barons had arranged that Pierre Mauclerc
+should begin hostilities, and that when Blanche summoned the feudal army
+to march against him each should come, but come with only two knights,
+which would make a force so small that Mauclerc would have nothing to
+fear. Once more Thibaud de Champagne came to the rescue. He gathered all
+the troops he could, and came with over three hundred knights, these
+being, when joined to the contingents from the loyal communes of the
+royal domain, enough to save Blanche. In January, 1229, Blanche marched
+into the domains of the refractory Mauclerc--who had refused to appear
+when summoned to the court--and laid siege to the strong castle of
+Belleme. In a few days, though the stronghold was considered
+impregnable, the garrison was forced to surrender. The actual military
+operations of this successful siege were conducted, of course, by
+Blanche's general, Jean Clement, the marshal of France; but she herself
+looked after the comfort of her army. It was intensely cold; she ordered
+the soldiers to build great bonfires in the camp, promising pay to those
+who would fetch fuel from the forests; by this means, men and horses
+were kept warm.
+
+After the capitulation of the garrison of Belleme, Mauclerc's power was
+temporarily broken, and Blanche marched back to Paris with Louis, who
+had accompanied her. The barons had not received the support on which
+they had counted from Henry III., whose weakness and vacillation kept
+him from taking advantage of what would have been a splendid opportunity
+to weaken the power of France.
+
+In her precarious situation Blanche needed the support of all classes;
+it was now her misfortune to incur, for a time, the ill will of the
+students of the University of Paris. These students had, from long
+custom and by royal favor, been allowed all sorts of privileges and
+immunities, since the University added no little to the prestige of
+Paris. They were a turbulent set, frequently engaged in brawls with the
+citizens. On Shrove Monday, 1229, some students went to an inn at
+Saint-Marcel, outside Paris, where they ate and drank, and then engaged
+in a violent quarrel with the innkeeper when the bill was presented. The
+quarrel at first seemed rather comic; after a wordy battle they came to
+blows and pulling of hair, till the students were driven ignominiously
+from the field. But next day, February 27th, they returned in force,
+armed with sticks and stones, and even swords. In a spirit of
+undiscriminating revenge, they wrecked the first inn they came across
+and beat the people in the streets, women as well as men. Word was sent
+at once to the authorities of the University, who appealed to Queen
+Blanche through Cardinal Romain. The prefect of Paris, with his
+soldiers, was ordered to proceed to the scene of the rioting and restore
+order, which he did with rather too good a will, for in the process
+there was bloodshed; several students were killed, and the complaint was
+made that those whom the prefect and his men attacked were not the
+guilty ones. The authorities of the University were up in arms against
+the queen. As she declined to make the reparation they demanded--which
+would have left the students more lawless than ever for the
+future--teachers and students scattered, to Rheims, to Angers, to
+Orleans, and many returned to their native land. The concessions which
+Blanche then made could not bring back all who had gone away. Though her
+policy may have been mistakenly severe one can but grant that she had
+cause for being severe. All our sympathies are with the woman whom the
+students did not hesitate to vilify, reviving the calumny about the
+relations of Blanche and Cardinal Romain, who had given her able support
+in this affair. Such currency did this vile story gain that one
+chronicler tells us that the queen submitted to an examination to
+disprove it.
+
+The first real victory for France in the long war of the Albigenses came
+with the treaty of Paris, sometimes called the treaty of Meaux, April
+12, 1229. It is, perhaps, fortunate for the reader's good opinion of
+Blanche that we omit to chronicle the horrors of this war, though most
+of those horrors were committed before she became ruler of France.
+Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse, the head and front of the resistance in
+Provence, was Blanche's cousin, and she had always shown herself mindful
+of family ties, so that we may charitably suppose that she did the best
+she could for the ruined Raymond. We do not know that she assisted at
+his humiliation,--barefooted, and in his shirt, he was led to the door
+of Notre Dame and made to swear absolute submission to the Church--but
+we cannot go wrong in assuming that some of the wise provisions of the
+treaty of Paris were of her suggesting. The provisions were very wise
+indeed, securing to the French crown almost everything that could be
+hoped; in our wildest moments of enthusiasm, however, we could not
+accuse Blanche of having tempered policy with mercy. As a summary of the
+situation, we may state that Raymond contracted to' surrender to Louis
+Beaucaire, Nimes, Carcassonne, and Beziers, with other territories on
+the Mediterranean to the west of the Rhone; that Toulouse and its
+territory must revert to his daughter Jeanne, who was to be espoused by
+one of the brothers of Louis IX.; that the dominions remaining to him
+should also revert to Jeanne, in failure of other heirs of his body.
+Failing heirs of Jeanne, the domains acquired as her dower were to
+revert to the crown of France. More complete ruin for Raymond could
+hardly have been compassed. It was the end of Provence both as a
+political and an artistic entity.
+
+We have alluded several times to the famous Thibaud IV., called _Le
+Chansonnier_, Count of Champagne. His relations with Blanche of Castille
+are matter both of history and of legend; it behooves us to try to sift
+the one from the other and to present some account of the loves of
+Blanche and Thibaud.
+
+Thibaud's mother, Blanche de Navarre, Countess of Champagne, had to play
+a role not unlike that of her cousin Blanche de Castille; she acted as
+regent in the name of her son, and it was due to her good management
+that he was allowed to inherit his patrimony. This was surely an age of
+woman, with Berengere ruling in Castille, Queen Blanche in France, and
+another Blanche, of the same family, in Champagne. Thibaud was of a
+gallant temperament, priding himself upon his knightly accomplishments,
+but not less upon his talent as a poet; for he was one of those
+imitators of the troubadours whom we might almost class with the
+troubadours themselves. Of his gifts as a poet we shall not speak here;
+in the histories of French literature will be found the record of many
+of his chansons. As a man, it is altogether probable that Thibaud did
+not suffer from an over-scrupulous conscience; we have knowledge of his
+acting in very bad faith on several occasions. But these manifestations
+of bad faith were almost always to the advantage of Blanche de Castille.
+The rebel barons would enter into league with Thibaud, and he would
+agree to betray his queen, and would even consider seriously the
+question of marrying the daughter and heiress of Pierre Mauclerc. At the
+critical moment comes a missive, nominally from the boy king: "Sir
+Thibaud de Champagne, I have heard that you have promised to take to
+wife the daughter of the Count Pierre de Bretagne; I bid you, by all
+that you hold most dear in this kingdom, that you do not so. The reason,
+you know full well;... for never have I had one who wished me more ill
+than this same count." The impulsive Thibaud reads the note, and he and
+his knights turn aside to support the fair lady who was the real author
+of the missive. It was this sort of thing which made the barons hate and
+distrust Thibaud and which gave some color to the reports they
+industriously circulated, alleging that Blanche was the mistress of
+Thibaud. The latter had already been accused of poisoning Louis VIII.;
+it was now added that this crime had been connived at by his paramour,
+Blanche.
+
+That Thibaud really loved Blanche, there can be no reasonable doubt. His
+amorous songs were probably inspired in part by this devotion to one
+whom he might well admire and love, the fair, and good, and great Queen
+Blanche, whom he could proudly claim as a cousin. In one of his songs he
+alludes to her, it seems to us, very distinctly:
+
+        "Trop est ce trouble, et s'aveis si cler nom."
+
+(Troubled was your life, and yet your name so clear.) The chronicles of
+the time abound in allusions to Thibaud's passion. It is said that, on
+one occasion, after a momentary revolt, he came to make his submission,
+and was severely reproached by the queen for his ingratitude. "Then the
+Count looked upon the Queen, who was so good and so beautiful, till her
+great beauty overcame him, and he stood all abashed. Then he answered
+her: 'By my faith, Madame, my heart and my body and all my lands are
+yours; there is naught that could please you that I would not do
+willingly; and never again, please God, will I go against you or yours.'
+And he departed all pensive, and often into his thoughts would come the
+memory of the sweet look, of the lovely countenance, of the queen. Then
+his heart was filled with sweet and loving thought. But when he
+remembered that she was so great a lady, and so good and pure that he
+could never win her love, his sweet thought of love turned into great
+sadness. And seeing that deep thought engenders melancholy, he was
+counselled by some wise men to take lessons in _biaus sons de viele et
+en douz chanz delitables_ (in sweet violin music and in soft and
+pleasing songs). And so he and Gace Brusle made between them the most
+beautiful, the most delightful, the most melodious songs ever heard,
+either in songs or in violin music. And he had them put in writing in
+the hall of his chateau at Provins and in that of Troyes; and they are
+called the songs of the King of Navarre."
+
+The chronicler who tells us this assigns the incident to the year 1236,
+when Blanche would have been forty-eight years of age. The date is
+obviously wrong, or rather the story of many years has been crowded into
+one. Thibaud's love for Blanche must have begun when she was young and
+really beautiful; one can hardly imagine a burning passion conceived for
+a lady of middle age, the mother of twelve children. His devotion, then,
+dates from an earlier period; indeed, we find definite record of it in
+the calumnies circulated by the barons before 1230; and one chronicler
+tells us that, during the war of that year, when the barons were
+ravaging Champagne, Count Thibaud, dressed as a common stroller and
+accompanied by one companion as miserably attired as himself, went
+through the country to find out what his people were saying about him.
+Everywhere he heard but ill of himself. "Then said the Count to his
+_ribaud_ (vagabond companion), 'Friend, I see full well that a penn'orth
+of bread would feed all my friends. I have none, indeed, I verily
+believe, not a one whom I can trust, save the Queen of France.' She was
+indeed his loyal friend, and well did she show that she did not hate
+him. By her the war was brought to an end, and all the land (Champagne)
+reconquered. Many tales do they tell of them, as of Iseut and Tristan."
+
+The love of Thibaud was not to be doubted, but it is a delicate matter
+to determine how far his sentiments were reciprocated by Blanche. On the
+one hand, the party of the barons openly and violently accused her of
+adultery; on the other hand, we know that no evil woman could have
+reared Saint Louis and have been beloved and revered by him. If Blanche
+was a good and pure woman, as we firmly believe, we shall again have to
+disappoint the lovers of romance, for there must be some explanation
+other than the purely erotic for her conduct toward Thibaud de
+Champagne. Alas for the romance! the common-sense explanation is not far
+to seek, and not difficult of acceptance when we remember the whole
+career of this remarkable woman. Blanche de Castille was an astute
+politician; otherwise she would never have been able to maintain her
+position, with everything against her: the fact that she was a woman,
+the fact that she was a foreigner, alone comprise many difficulties. We
+do not know of a single instance in which she allowed her
+feelings--love, hate, family affection, mere feminine weakness--to sway
+her or interfere with the settled policy which she had determined upon
+for the good of her kingdom and of her children. Indeed, as we shall see
+later, one serious defect in her character was her inflexibility of
+purpose, her resolute suppression of the tenderer feelings. That she
+liked and perhaps admired the brilliant poet-knight who proclaimed his
+devotion to her in "songs the sweetest ever heard," we need not doubt;
+but she never responded to his ardent passion. Surrounded by enemies
+domestic and enemies foreign, she took advantage of the romantic
+devotion of a poet to win the very effective support of one of the most
+powerful barons of France. Flattering Thibaud's vanity now and then,--it
+was no small thing to be reputed the lover of a queen,--she adroitly
+kept him in leash. As a sovereign, too, she was careful to retain his
+good will by services of the utmost value, nay, of imperative necessity.
+
+The truce with England was to expire on July 22, 1229. Just at this
+time, when it might be supposed that the queen's energies would be
+required in defending or at least in watching the western frontier,
+threatened by Pierre Mauclerc and his English allies, the Duke of
+Burgundy and the Count of Nevers prepared to invade Thibaud's country.
+Marching into Champagne, they devastated the country and reduced Thibaud
+to a very precarious condition. The pretext of this war was, first, that
+Thibaud was a traitor and the assassin of Louis VIII.; secondly, that he
+was a bastard, and that the real ruler of Champagne was Alix, Queen of
+Cyprus, granddaughter of Thibaud's uncle, Henry II. of Champagne. The
+claims were both, of course, preposterous, merely trumped up to hide the
+real motive of the attack, which was aimed at Blanche de Castille and
+through her at the power of the crown. Alix de Champagne, as the barons
+called her, was herself of illegitimate descent, a fact recognized by
+the Church itself.
+
+Like a faithful sovereign, Blanche hastened to the defence of her
+vassal. Ordering Ferrand de Flandre to create a diversion by an attack
+upon the county of Boulogne, she summoned her vassals and commanded them
+to desist from their attack upon Thibaud. They refused to obey; she
+forthwith put herself at the head of her army and marched to Troyes. The
+barons were compelled to accede to a truce.
+
+During this truce Thibaud managed to secure several allies, and the
+civil war broke out again, even before the nominal expiration of the
+truce. Villages and towns were burned by the partisans on both sides;
+Philippe Hurepel, it is said, besought Blanche to be allowed to fight a
+duel with Thibaud to avenge the alleged murder of Louis VIII.--a sort
+of appeal to the judgment of God. Wider and wider spread the flames of
+civil war, till Blanche was almost at the end of her resources, and in
+real peril. At this juncture a danger from without caused a temporary
+cessation of hostilities against Thibaud de Champagne.
+
+Pierre Mauclerc, now insolently styling himself Duke--not Count--of
+Brittany, and adding an English title, Count of Richmond, had written to
+Louis IX. announcing the withdrawal of his homage. He was to be
+henceforth a vassal of the crown of England. Henry III. was preparing in
+earnest for a descent upon France; and Blanche sought allies, or at
+least friends, among her vassals, while the barons leagued against
+Thibaud agreed to a truce. Collecting what forces she could, the queen,
+accompanied by Louis, marched toward Angers against Pierre. Meanwhile,
+with much pomp and ceremony and rich clothing and luxurious baggage,
+Henry III. landed at Saint-Malo, on May 3, 1230, where he had an
+interview with Pierre. Henry was full of splendid plans; fortunately for
+Blanche, he was incapable of putting them into execution. The time was
+frittered away in petty encounters, and in debauchery on Henry's part,
+while Blanche continued to negotiate with any who seemed disposed to
+favor her cause. She won in this way the support of some Breton and
+Poitevin nobles, and held together her uncertain feudal army. As soon as
+the legal forty days of their service were done, the more discontented
+of the vassals in her army withdrew, and the king had to follow them in
+order to prevent their renewing their attacks upon Champagne. Instead of
+profiting by the embarrassment of his enemies and overwhelming the
+French, Henry marched to and fro in Brittany, through Poitou and to
+Bordeaux, returning thence to Brittany. His army was exhausted without
+fighting; there was much sickness among men and animals; his provisions
+were giving out. Tired of the fruitless expedition, he sailed back to
+England, abandoning to the chances of war the Breton nobles who had
+deserted France under promise of protection from England. Before the
+joyful news of his departure could reach her, however, Blanche was again
+in trouble in her attempts to protect Thibaud de Champagne.
+
+A coalition stronger than before had been formed against Thibaud. He had
+put forth his entire resources in his preparations for defence; but in a
+pitched battle under the walls of Provins his forces were defeated and
+routed, and the count himself fled to Paris with the pursuing victors at
+his heels. All seemed lost, and his enemies were marching about as they
+pleased over Champagne, when Queen Blanche arrived with her army, which
+was large enough, fortunately, to intimidate the rebels. She would not
+talk of terms with armed rebels, but demanded the evacuation of
+Champagne. After some little parleying, in which the queen held firm,
+the rebellious barons submitted. Reparation was agreed to on both sides,
+and the chief of the malcontents, Philippe Hurepel, Count of Boulogne,
+was satisfied by large indemnities granted him for the damage inflicted
+by Ferrand de Flandre while he was making war, in defiance of his
+sovereign, upon the Count of Champagne. Truly, mediaeval dispensations
+are sometimes amazing.
+
+By the end of 1230 the barons were at peace, and Blanche was at liberty
+to turn her attention to Brittany and Pierre Mauclerc. Louis and his
+mother marched upon Brittany in the early summer of 1231; but a truce
+was made with England, and soon after with Pierre Mauclerc, to last
+until June 24, 1234. The most critical period in Blanche's regency was
+now passed. Her son, now nearing his majority, was firmly established on
+his throne; for the great ones of the land had not been able to subdue
+the spirit of his mother. Their wars had devastated a considerable
+portion of France, but the common people knew who was to blame for the
+havoc wrought; they had seen their queen a peacemaker, resorting to arms
+in defence of loyal and oppressed subjects, but always endeavoring to
+further the interests of the kingdom by preserving order within rather
+than by seeking conquests without. She had shown herself a ruler full of
+energy and resource; the great vassals of the crown, little by little,
+recognized their inability to destroy her power, and abandoned the
+attempt.
+
+Two formidable enemies still threatened her, however, in the persons of
+Henry III. and Pierre Mauclerc. While warlike preparations were going
+forward, in anticipation of the expiration of the truce, domestic
+sorrows fell upon Blanche; she lost two of her sons, John and Philippe
+Dagobert, the first of whom died certainly in 1232, the second perhaps
+in the same year, perhaps not till 1234. In the midst of great events,
+those griefs which touch most nearly a woman's heart pass unnoticed by
+chroniclers.
+
+In order to be prepared for the expiration of the truce, Pierre Mauclerc
+was seeking to gain such allies as he could. Even in the early part of
+1232 he began negotiations with Thibaud de Champagne,--who had lost his
+second wife, Agnes de Beaujeu, in the year preceding,--in order to bring
+about his marriage to Yolande de Bretagne. We have seen how Blanche
+checkmated this move of her wily adversary. Thibaud married, in
+September, 1232, Marguerite, the daughter of the loyal Archambaud de
+Bourbon. In the next year died one who had been a dangerous power in
+France, Count Philippe Hurepel; his death removed one more of Blanche's
+difficulties, for he had been restless and pugnacious, when not actually
+in rebellion. In 1234 Blanche was enabled to do another good turn to
+Thibaud, who now, by the death of his uncle, had become King of Navarre.
+The old question of the succession in Champagne and the claims of Alix
+had never been satisfactorily determined. Blanche now summoned Alix to a
+conference, where, realizing that her party was no longer in the
+ascendant, the latter renounced all claim to the counties of Champagne
+and Blois.
+
+From the south of France, that land of the troubadours, now laid waste
+in the name of religion, Blanche had nothing to fear in the way of
+active resistance. Her cousin, Raymond VII. of Toulouse, was completely
+overcome and was intent only on making his peace with the Church. Prince
+Alphonse of France was to wed Raymond's daughter, Jeanne, and the
+restoration of some degree of prosperity in a land which might ere long
+become a part of France was a matter which Blanche was too wise to
+neglect. Never forgetting the political interests she had to serve, she
+did all in her power to protect Raymond from petty annoyance and
+spoliation, to soothe his feelings, and to get the Pope to return to him
+the marquisate of Provence, taken away by the treaty of 1229. Meanwhile,
+the royal power was being more firmly established over the domains ceded
+to France.
+
+Louis IX. was nearing manhood; it was time to seek a suitable alliance
+for him. The initiative in this matter probably came from Blanche, who
+decided everything for her son, with his unquestioning approval. In
+1233, when Louis was nineteen, she consulted with her friends and
+decided upon the daughter of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, as the
+most suitable wife for her son. Though the King of France could have
+commanded a more brilliant alliance, the marriage with Marguerite de
+Provence was a happy one, and not impolitic, for it assured the
+friendship of the Provencals, and through the mediation of the queen
+peace was re-established between the Counts of Provence and Toulouse.
+
+An embassy was despatched to escort the young princess, who, as became a
+daughter of Provence, came with a numerous suite, in which there were
+minstrels and musicians. Louis went to meet his bride, accompanied by
+most of the members of the royal family, and the marriage ceremony was
+performed at Sens, by the Archbishop, on May 26 or 27, 1234. Adequate
+preparations consonant with the dignity of the occasion had been made by
+Blanche, but there was no extravagance, no vain display. We hear of a
+gold crown made for the young queen; of jewels purchased for her; and of
+a ring formed of lilies and _marguerites_, with the inscription _Hors
+cet and pourrions nous trouver amor?_--"Without this ring, can we find
+love?" presented to the bride by Louis. A handsome wardrobe was provided
+for the king, and to the lords and ladies of the court were given furs,
+handsome robes, many of silk, and other presents. Tents were erected to
+accommodate the crowd, which was too great to find housing in Sens, and
+there was a leafy bower, made of green boughs, where the king's throne
+was set up and where, doubtless, the minstrels played. Then there were
+distributions of money among the poor, whom Blanche and her son never
+forgot.
+
+Marguerite was young, lovely, and, what was more important still in one
+who must be the wife of a saint, had been carefully educated and reared
+in piety. She was of gentler stuff than Queen Blanche, and so we shall
+not find her playing any great role in history; but she was courageous,
+and a devoted wife. She won her husband's love, and probably exercised
+some influence over him; but of her married life and of her treatment by
+Queen Blanche we shall not speak at present.
+
+War with England was threatening again when, on June 8th, Louis returned
+to Paris with his bride; for the truce with England could not be
+renewed. Blanche de Castille had provided against the evil day, and the
+vindictive cruelty of Pierre Mauclerc had helped on her projects. He
+punished so severely those of his vassals who had been loyal to France
+that it became easier for Blanche to detach one here and there as an
+ally. She did not wait for the expiration of the truce to begin her
+operations, but summoned her army and marched upon Brittany with
+overwhelming forces. Pierre, who had had but small aid from Henry III.,
+was compelled to submit, and a truce was agreed to for three months, to
+terminate on November 15th. The delay had been sought by Pierre in the
+hope of extracting, by entreaties or threats, more active assistance
+from the miserable Henry III. Finding his appeals here in vain, Pierre
+returned to France to submit to Blanche and Louis. It is said that he
+came into the presence of the king with a halter about his neck, pleaded
+for mercy, and abandoned to Louis all Brittany. While this is doubtless
+an exaggeration, we know that he submitted absolutely, in November,
+1234, to the will of his sovereign, and promised to serve faithfully the
+king and his mother. It was not long after this that he went to the Holy
+Land, leaving the government of Brittany in the hands of his son.
+
+The most bitter, the most crafty, the most dangerous of her enemies
+having been reduced to subjection, there remained but one task for
+Blanche to accomplish in order to crown the work she had undertaken for
+her son. In the course of the year 1235-1236 negotiations were
+undertaken with England that resulted in a truce for a term of five
+years. Blanche was about to hand over the more active control of affairs
+to Louis; it was no bad beginning for him to find his realm at peace
+within and without, with a prospect of the continuance of these
+conditions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MOTHER AND THE WIFE OF A SAINT
+
+As the regency of Queen Blanche had begun without formality, so it
+ceased insensibly. There was no set day upon which she formally
+relinquished the reins to Louis; and so one can but determine an
+approximate date. On April 25, 1234, Louis may be considered to have
+attained his majority. Though we find the name of Blanche figuring in
+royal acts after this date, it becomes less frequent: her share in the
+government is growing less, though throughout her life she never ceased
+to stand by her son and act with or advise him. At the very close of her
+regency we find her once more the central figure with that unaccountable
+person Thibaud de Champagne. It must be remembered that he was now King
+of Navarre, a dignity which brought with it less of real power in France
+than one might suppose; for the French and the Spanish dominions,
+Champagne and Navarre, were separated. His elevation to the throne may
+have momentarily turned the head of the poet-king; at any rate, he began
+to show dissatisfaction and to demur about fulfilling some of the
+conditions incident to the settlement of the claims of Alix de
+Champagne. In defiance of his duty as a vassal he gave his daughter,
+without the king's consent, to Jean le Roux, son of Pierre Mauclerc. He
+formed alliances with Mauclerc and with others of the old league; the
+hostile intent could not be mistaken. The king mobilized his forces and
+went to meet those of Thibaud. As the latter had not had time to effect
+a junction with his Breton allies, the royal forces were overwhelming,
+and he was compelled to find some way out of his difficulty other than
+fighting. Remembering that he had assumed the Cross, and was, therefore,
+under the protection of the Church, he persuaded the Pope to enjoin
+Louis from attacking him, declaring that his person and his lands were,
+on account of his crusading vow, under the protection of the Church.
+Even this intervention might not have saved him from severe punishment
+at the hands of his incensed sovereign; but when he sent to make
+submission and to ask mercy, Queen Blanche, to whom he especially
+appealed, summoned him to her presence and promised to obtain fair terms
+for him. The terms, indeed, were not hard, nor were the reproaches
+unduly severe which Blanche is said to have made in her last interview
+with Thibaud: "In God's name, Count Thibaud, you should not have taken
+sides against us; you should have called to mind the great goodness of
+my son, the king, when he came to your aid to protect your county and
+your lands from all the barons of France, who would have burned
+everything and reduced it to ashes." Then came the courteous reply of
+the gallant and contrite Thibaud: "By my faith, madame, my heart and my
+body and all my lands are yours; there is naught that could please you
+that I would not do willingly; and never again, please God, will I go
+against you or yours."
+
+The romance of this scene, almost pathetic, is ruthlessly disturbed by
+the scene that is said to have followed, yet we must tell of this also.
+The young Prince Robert, always of a violent temper, took it upon him to
+insult the vanquished King of Navarre. He had the tails of the latter's
+horses cut off a--shameful insult to a knight--and as Thibaud was
+leaving the palace Robert threw a soft cheese on his head. Thibaud
+returned to Blanche indignant at the insult offered him despite her safe
+conduct; and she was preparing to punish the offenders summarily when
+she discovered that the ringleader was her own son.
+
+During the ten or twelve years that now intervened before Blanche was
+again to take the regency during Saint Louis's crusade, her role in
+public life is of less importance; there will be a fact in history to
+note here and there, but most of that which we shall say concerns the
+woman, the mother, rather than the queen. Though eminently fitted in
+intellect and temperament for exercising the powers of an active ruler,
+Blanche never forgot that she was only the king's mother, and that she
+held the royal power in trust for him. In all her acts--they were really
+done on her own responsibility--she sought to associate the name of her
+son, as if she would keep for him the honor. In that speech to Count
+Thibaud she does not reproach him for ingratitude to her; it is, "you
+should have called to mind the great goodness of my son, the king." Her
+whole life was devoted to the service of this son, whom she loved with a
+love painfully intense, cruelly jealous.
+
+When she was left a widow, there was entrusted to her not merely the
+ruling of a kingdom but the rearing of a large family of children. To
+this latter task Blanche devoted herself with as much energy and as much
+good sense as she displayed in larger affairs. She reared with
+particular care the son who, though not the eldest, had become the heir
+to the crown. She tried to make of him a good man. It was certainly not
+her training or her example that taught him excessive devoutness; for,
+though a good Christian, she was not a devotee. When he was a boy she
+gave him over to the care of masters who were to instruct him in all
+things. There was physical exercise and recreation as well as study; the
+young prince was not even exempt from discipline: according to his own
+testimony, one of his masters "sometimes beat him to teach him
+discipline." His days were regularly portioned off into periods of work,
+of play, and of religious devotion; in the midst of his teachers, most
+of whom were Dominicans, the little prince led a very sober life. He was
+of a quiet and docile disposition, and received instruction willingly
+and readily, and became a man of considerable learning. From his youth
+he manifested a tendency to extreme piety, going daily to church, where
+he entered into the services with strange fervor; he sang no songs but
+hymns, and led a pure and temperate life. It is said that a religious
+fanatic, who had listened to some of the calumnies circulated against
+the queen, one day came to her and rebuked her bitterly for encouraging
+her son to live a life of licentiousness, in the society of concubines.
+She corrected his mistaken impression, and said that if her son, whom
+she loved better than any creature living, were sick unto death she
+would not have him made whole by the commission of a mortal sin. Saint
+Louis never forgot this saying of his mother's, which he was fond of
+repeating to Joinville, and by which he sought to regulate his conduct.
+
+Another of Blanche's children was of the same disposition as Saint Louis
+in regard to religion. This was the Princess Isabelle, whom her mother
+had trained as carefully as Louis. On one occasion, when the family was
+going on a journey and there was much noise of preparation in the midst
+of the packing, Isabelle covered herself up in the bedclothes in order
+to pray undisturbed. One of the servants, occupied in packing, picked up
+child and bedclothes together, and was about to put her with the rest of
+the baggage, when she was discovered. Even as a child she would take no
+part in games, and as a young girl shunned all the gayeties of the
+court, devoting herself to study, to reading the Scriptures, and to
+devotional and charitable works, leading a life of the utmost austerity.
+It is pleasant to know that this timid, pious little lady was not forced
+into a distasteful union and passed her days in the pursuits she liked
+best.
+
+Blanche's devotion to her son Louis was repaid by the greatest deference
+and affection. Her ascendency over him lasted as long as she lived, and
+was responsible, no doubt, for much unhappiness to his wife. Blanche's
+love was full of jealousy; she would brook no rival; she must always be
+first in the affections of her son. And one cannot deny that the great
+queen was selfish even to the point of positive cruelty in her treatment
+of Marguerite de Provence. A mere child when she came to the court of
+France, Marguerite was made to feel that she was not to be first there,
+though her position as the wife of Louis gave her a claim to first
+place. She was not of masculine temperament, like Blanche, and she did
+not seek even the show of power; but Blanche grudged her even the love
+of her husband, though we have no evidence that Marguerite ever
+reproached Saint Louis with excessive filial devotion or sought to
+detach him from his mother. Many stories have come down to us of how
+"the young queen" was treated by the one whom all France continued to
+call "the Queen." From the testimony of those intimate with the habits
+of the royal family come to us details of espionage, petty malice, and
+cold-heartedness on the part of Blanche: we could not believe these
+things if they came from less competent witnesses. They are not to the
+credit of Blanche, for they show the worst side of her nature. The
+confessor of Saint Louis says: "The queen mother displayed great
+harshness and rudeness towards Queen Marguerite. She would not permit
+the king to remain alone with his wife. When the king, with the two
+queens, went in royal progress through France, Queen Blanche commonly
+separated the king and the queen, and they were never lodged together.
+It happened once that, at the manor of Pontoise, the king was lodged in
+a room above the lodging of his wife. He had instructed the ushers in
+the anteroom that, whenever he was with the queen and Queen Blanche
+wished to enter his room or the queen's, they should whip the dogs to
+make them bark; and when the king heard this he hid from his mother."
+Imagine the King of France, the man whose peculiar piety won for him the
+name of a saint, dodging about like a guilty urchin to keep his mother
+from finding him in the company of his wife!
+
+The honest old Sieur de Joinville, who feared not to tell his master
+when he thought him in the wrong, tells us that on one occasion, when
+Marguerite was very ill after the birth of a child, Louis came in to see
+her, fearing she was in danger of death. Blanche came in, and Louis hid
+himself behind the bed as well as he could, but she detected him. Taking
+him by the hand, she said: "Come away, for you are doing no good here."
+She led him out of the room. "When the queen saw that Queen Blanche was
+separating her from her husband, she cried out with a loud voice: 'Alas!
+will you let me see my husband neither in life nor in death?' And so
+saying she fainted away so that they thought she was dead; and the king,
+who thought so too, ran back to her and brought her out of her swoon."
+There is nothing in these stories to the credit of Blanche or of her
+saintly son.
+
+Let us turn from this unpleasant picture to glance at some of the facts
+in the domestic economy of the royal household. The expenditures of the
+court were not great; the household was kept on a scale befitting its
+rank, but there was no vain display. Besides the queen's children there
+were always a number of dependents, ladies and gentlemen in waiting,
+etc., and the expenses for the whole establishment were kept in a common
+account.
+
+Blanche de Castille loved her native land, which she never saw again
+after she left it to become the wife of Louis VIII., and she kept up as
+active relations as possible with her relatives, particularly with Queen
+Berengere; but she had too much good sense to flood her court with
+Spanish dependents and Spanish customs, and, therefore, we do not find a
+great number of Spaniards occupying important posts in the court. A
+certain number of her special attendants appear to have been Spaniards;
+we may note a lady in waiting called Mincia, who is often mentioned in
+the accounts, and who is granted money and horses for a journey into
+Spain. Then there are two Spaniards to whom gifts of clothing and the
+like are made at the time of the coronation of Queen Marguerite. But
+these and other Spaniards whose names one can pick out belonged to the
+personal suite of the queen, and had nothing to do with politics. There
+was nothing like the incursion of foreigners which, the people
+complained, Italianized France in the time of the Medicis.
+
+Among the legitimate expenditures of the court, but rather surprising in
+the household of a saint, are certain sums set down for the payment of
+minstrels. Prince Robert of France loved to give presents to minstrels,
+and when he was knighted, in 1237, more than two hundred and twenty
+pounds went to the payment of these singers. The horses and their
+furnishings form no small item in the expenses, since most of the
+travelling had to be done on horseback, and a numerous retinue of
+mounted attendants must be provided. Common pack horses were not costly,
+but the easy-riding palfrey and the war horse ranged in price from
+thirty to seventy-five pounds. There were carriages and other vehicles
+also, though the carriages were few. The state of the roads, indeed,
+often precluded their use; we find Blanche de Castille excusing herself
+from going to Saint-Denis because the state of her health forbids her
+going on horseback: the roads were probably impassable; or, perhaps, it
+was in attempting this little journey that her carriage suffered the
+damages recorded in a bill of repairs of 1234, when it seems the unlucky
+vehicle needed new wheels. There was a carriage for _la jeune reine_
+Marguerite, too, and a new one was purchased in 1239.
+
+Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family,
+Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in
+charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle
+Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing
+than it has ever been since those days. During Blanche's regency the
+kingdom had been repeatedly ravaged in the course of the wars of the
+nobles, and there is record of famine, notably in the southwest of the
+kingdom, where one chronicler asserts that in 1235 he saw a hundred
+bodies buried in one day in a cemetery at Limoges. On their frequent
+journeys throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be
+done to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the
+wayside in crowds. There were regular officers to allot the alms
+properly, and considerable sums were distributed, usually at every stage
+on the journey. At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of
+money and of bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of
+the Church. One special charity of Queen Blanche's deserves notice. When
+a girl was to be married, one of the first questions was, and still is,
+in France, what dower her parents could give with her; if the dower were
+insufficient, the poor girl ran a serious risk of not being married at
+all. Blanche often came to the aid of deserving girls so situated, and
+her gifts were not confined to her immediate attendants and their
+families; for example, a poor woman from Anet, a stranger to the court,
+received one hundred sous parisis for the marriage of her daughter; and
+while on her way back from Angers, Blanche met a young girl of Nogent,
+to whom she gave fifteen pounds for her marriage.
+
+Blanche had always been respectful in her attitude toward the Church,
+and pious in her habit of life; but she was never servile in her
+attitude toward churchmen, whom she would no more allow to interfere
+with her rule than the greatest of the barons. The higher clergy, as a
+body, were faithful to her; but, here and there, bishops and archbishops
+arrogated to themselves powers not theirs, or refused to recognize the
+rights of the crown, whereupon Blanche did not hesitate to join issue
+with them. One celebrated case is that of the riots at Beauvais, in
+1233, when, under Blanche's direction, Louis restored order and asserted
+the royal power in spite of the objections of the bishop, and continued
+to sustain the position taken, even after an interdict had been
+proclaimed in Beauvais.
+
+During the period between her two regencies, Blanche continued to reside
+at the court; her jealousy of Marguerite would in part account for her
+preferring this to retirement to some one of the chateaux belonging to
+her private estate. At the time, it must be remembered, the queen of
+Philippe Auguste, Ingeburge, was living in this way at Orleans. Queen
+Blanche, indeed, enjoyed a considerable revenue from her estates, which
+she generally intrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, the
+financial agents of many a crowned head in Europe. Part of her estates
+she administered in person. As a further occupation, she devoted herself
+to various charities. In 1242 the famous abbey of Notre Dame, generally
+known as Maubuisson, at Pontoise, was completed, thanks to the queen's
+munificence and to her careful supervision. Maubuisson, with its many
+dependencies, its beautiful gardens and buildings, became one of the
+most splendid monastic institutions in France. It was frequently visited
+and enriched with new gifts by its foundress and her son, and noble
+ladies chose it as the place to take the veil. One of these ladies,
+Countess Alix de Macon, became abbess of another convent, Notre Dame du
+Lys, near Melun, founded by Blanche de Castille.
+
+The management of her estates and the foundation of convents did not,
+however, monopolize the queen's time and energies; she was always the
+careful mother, looking out for the interests of her children, and
+always the queen, ready to act or to decide promptly and firmly in the
+affairs of the kingdom. She arranged the marriages of her sons, Robert
+and Alphonse. The former married, in 1237, Mahaut, daughter of the Duke
+of Brabant, and there were magnificent festivities at Compiegne in honor
+of the event, the young prince being knighted and made Count of Artois.
+Alphonse, betrothed to the daughter of Raymond of Toulouse, was married
+in 1238. The next year Blanche provided a rich and most desirable bride
+for her nephew, Alphonse de Portugal, who had been reared at the French
+court. He married the widow of Philippe Hurepel, Mahaut de Boulogne, and
+was a faithful vassal of France until he became King of Portugal in
+1248. For each of these weddings Blanche saw that there was suitable
+provision in the way of new and elegant clothes and entertainments in
+keeping with the occasion.
+
+[Illustration 5: BLANCHE OF CASTILLE, MOTHER OF SAINT LOUIS.
+After the painting by Moreau de Tours.
+Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family,
+Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in
+charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle
+Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing
+than it has ever been since those days. On their frequent journeys
+throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be done to
+alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the wayside.
+At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of-money and of
+bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of the Church.]
+
+In the larger world, Louis IX. still sought the counsel of his mother:
+"He sought her presence in his council, whenever he could have it with
+profit or advantage." In judicial proceedings particularly, we still
+find her acting in her sovereign capacity; and she continued to keep an
+eye upon those who had formerly been the rebel barons, her name being
+associated with that of Louis in various acts concerning the shifty
+Pierre Mauclerc. For her unfortunate cousin, Raymond of Toulouse, she
+still exerted her influence with the Pope to obtain some relief from the
+obligation which he had been forced to assume of spending five years in
+the Holy Land. It was at his mother's instance, too, that Louis IX.
+bought from the young Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople those most holy
+relics, the Crown of Thorns and the large portion of the true Cross, to
+receive which Louis built the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle. The purchase
+was really arranged as an excuse for contributing largely to the
+depleted treasury of the Christian Empire of the East, whose emperor was
+doubly related to Saint Louis through his father and through Blanche de
+Castille. The Crown of Thorns, indeed, had been in pawn to Venice. Louis
+and Blanche went to meet the sacred relic, which was escorted to its
+resting place in Paris by great crowds singing hymns and displaying
+every mark of the utmost reverence. For the piece of the Cross, bought
+three years later, in 1241, the same elaborate ceremonial was observed;
+and in the great procession which accompanied Saint Louis as he bore the
+Cross on his shoulders through the streets of Paris walked Blanche and
+Marguerite, barefooted.
+
+When the Tartar hordes of Ghenghis Khan overran Poland and Hungary, the
+whole of Christian Europe trembled with fear and horror. If these
+barbarians could not be checked, and they continued to pour in
+resistless floods over the land, what was to become of Christendom?
+"What shall we do, my son?" cried Blanche; "what will become of us?"
+"Fear not, mother," replied the brave king; "let us trust in Heaven."
+And then he added that famous pun which all his biographers repeat: "If
+these Tartars come upon us, either we shall send them back to Tartarus,
+whence they came, or they will send us all to Heaven."
+
+Out of this threatening of the Tartars grew a religious persecution, in
+which Blanche took a part not discreditable to her. When things went
+wrong in the Middle Ages, it was the fault of the weak and oppressed; if
+it was not the witches, it was the Jews who had brought misfortune upon
+the land, and who must be punished before God would be pleased again. In
+this case it was the Jews, who were accused of lending aid to the
+Tartars. The popular odium incurred by this accusation encouraged the
+prosecution of an investigation, ordered by Pope Gregory IX., into the
+doctrines of the Talmud. France appears to have been the only country
+where the investigation was actually made. Several Jewish rabbis were
+haled before the court, presided over by Blanche, to explain and answer
+for their books. The fairness with which Blanche presided is indeed
+remarkable when one remembers the severity of the common judicial
+procedure of the time. The chief rabbi, Yehiel, appealed to her several
+times against the injustice of being forced to answer certain questions,
+and she sustained his plea. When Yehiel complained that, whatever the
+court decided, he and his people could not be protected from the blind
+rage of the populace, Blanche replied: "Say no more of that. We are
+resolved to protect you, you and all your goods, and he who dares to
+persecute you will be held a criminal." When he protested against taking
+an oath demanded by his persecutors, because it was against his
+conscience to swear, Blanche decided: "Since it is painful to him, and
+since he has never taken an oath, do not insist upon it." She reproved
+the Christian advocates, the learned doctors of the Church, for the
+unseemly violence of their language, and sought in every way to maintain
+some sort of impartiality, or at least of decency, in the trial. If she
+had conducted the trial to the close, there might have been a different
+sentence from that which condemned the Talmud and ordered it to be
+committed to the flames.
+
+It was through an agent of Blanche, apparently a burgess of Rochelle,
+that Saint Louis obtained most valuable and timely information in regard
+to the rebellious preparations of Hugues de Lusignan, Comte de la
+Marche. This Hugues de Lusignan was the vassal of Alphonse, brother of
+the king. He had always been inclined to revolt, and this inclination
+was not lessened by the incitement of his wife, the haughty,
+high-tempered Isabelle d'Angouleme, widow of King John of England. To
+have started as Queen of England, on an equal footing with her
+contemporary, Blanche de Castille, to have seen her miserable husband
+gradually lose his rich possessions in France, and to find herself now
+merely a countess and compelled to do homage to a son of her
+rival,--this must have been the very wormwood of bitterness for
+Isabelle. The secret agent of Queen Blanche writes a very elaborate
+account of the conduct of Isabelle and Hugues in 1242.
+
+Hearing that Hugues had received King Louis and his brother, Alphonse,
+in her absence, Isabelle carried off part of her property and
+established herself in Angouleme. For three days she refused to admit
+her husband to her presence, and when he did appear she lashed him with
+her tongue in furious fashion: "You miserable man, did you not see how
+things went at Poitiers, when I had to dance attendance for three days
+upon your King and your Queen? When at last I was admitted to their
+presence, there sat the King on one side of the royal bed and the Queen
+on the other.... They did not summon me; they did not offer me a seat,
+and that on purpose to humiliate me before the court. There was I, like
+a miserable, despised servant, standing up in front of them in the
+crowd. Neither at my entry nor at my exit did they make any show of
+rising, in mere contempt of me and of you, too, as you ought to have had
+sense enough to see." After scenes of this kind in the bosom of his
+family it is not surprising that the unfortunate Comte de la Marche
+sought the more peaceful atmosphere of the camp, and engaged in a revolt
+against his sovereign. Louis, however, had little difficulty in bringing
+him to reason and obtaining another victory over England, whom the
+rebels had enlisted on their side. "And it was no marvel," says
+Joinville, writing of this campaign of Saint Louis's, "for he acted
+according to the advice of the good mother who was with him."
+
+One of the severest trials in the life of this _bonne mere_ was
+approaching. Louis, always of a delicate constitution, had contracted a
+fever during the campaign against the Comte de la Marche, and the
+effects lingered with him until, at the close of 1244, he had a violent
+recurrence of the attack, accompanied by dysentery. In spite of the
+tender care of Blanche, his life was despaired of. He lost consciousness
+and, says Joinville, to whom we shall leave the telling of the story,
+"was in such extremity that one of the ladies watching by him wished to
+draw the sheet over his face, and said that he was dead. And another
+lady, who was on the other side of the bed, would not suffer it, but
+said that there was still life in him. And as He heard the discussion
+between these two ladies, Our Lord had compassion on him, and gave him
+back his health. And as soon as he could speak he demanded that they
+give him the Cross; and so it was done. Then the queen, his mother,
+heard that the power of speech had returned to him, and she showed
+therefore as great joy as she could. And when she knew that he had taken
+the Cross, as he himself told her, she showed as great grief as if she
+had seen him dead."
+
+Blanche's grief was not without cause, for nothing short of the death of
+this well-beloved son could have caused her the pain that she must
+endure if he went on the crusade. Not only her age, but the knowledge
+that he would wish her to stay behind and guard the kingdom for him,
+precluded all thought of her accompanying him. It meant separation from
+him on whom she had all her life lavished an affection little short of
+idolatry. How bitterly must she have regretted encouraging that fervent
+piety that now led to a sacrifice, in the name of his religion, of all
+that the king, the son, the husband ought to hold most dear. At a time
+when, under the persistent efforts of his grandfather, his father, and
+his mother, the power of the crown had just begun to be firmly
+established, Louis must reverse all this policy, or rather must make use
+of it not to the profit of his kingdom but to that of fanatical
+religious ideals. Blanche was too good a politician not to understand
+this, and too sensible not to deplore it. Louis's duty lay in France; he
+had everything to lose, nothing to gain, in a crusade; though Blanche
+knew too well the relentless doggedness with which he would cling to
+what he conceived to be his duty to God, nevertheless she pleaded with
+him to give up the idea of going on the crusade.
+
+The pleading of his mother and of his wife could not turn Saint Louis
+from his design, nor was the advice of his councillors more effective.
+For three years, however, other matters occupied his attention, though
+the preparations for his holy war were not forgotten. When these
+preparations began to be undertaken with more vigor a fresh attempt was
+made to dissuade him. The Bishop of Paris one day said to him: "Do you
+remember, sire, that when you received the cross, when you made suddenly
+and without reflection so momentous a vow, you were weak and troubled in
+spirit, which took from your words the weight of truth and
+responsibility? Now is come the time to seek release from this
+obligation. Our lord, the Pope, who knows the needs of your kingdom,
+would gladly give you a dispensation from your vow." And then he pointed
+out the peculiar danger of undertaking such an enterprise in the
+existing disturbed state of Europe. Blanche was present, watching with
+anxious countenance the effect of this subtle appeal. "My son, my son!"
+she said, "remember how sweet it is to God to see a son obedient to his
+mother; and never did mother give her child better counsel than I give
+you. You have no need to trouble yourself about the Holy Land; if you
+will but stay in your own land, which will prosper in your presence, we
+shall be able to send thither more men and more money than if your
+country were suffering and weakened by your absence." Louis listened
+silently, thought earnestly a moment, and then replied: "You say that I
+was not myself when I took the cross. Very well, since you so wish, I
+lay it aside; I give it back to you." With his own hand he took the
+sacred symbol from his shoulder and surrendered it to the bishop. Then,
+while those present had hardly recovered from their delight and
+astonishment, he spoke again: "Friends, now surely I am not lacking in
+sense, I am not weak or troubled in spirit; I demand my cross again; He
+Who knows all things knows that no food shall pass my lips until the
+cross is placed once more on my shoulder."
+
+There was no turning aside a man of such character; the preparations for
+the crusade went on, and Saint Louis raised the Oriflamme at Saint-Denis
+on June 12, 1248. We shall not tell of the crusade or of Louis's
+characteristic conscientiousness in seeing, before he left, that
+reparation was made for every act of injustice done in his kingdom, for
+which purpose he sent out a commission charged with holding an inquest
+in all parts of France. The inevitable day of separation came, the day
+to which Blanche looked forward as the last upon which she would see her
+son. She accompanied him for the first three or four days of his
+journey, which lay through southern France to Aigues-Mortes, and at
+Corbeil she received the regency, with power to act in the government
+through what agents she pleased and in what way she pleased. The
+guardianship of his children, too, Louis left to Blanche. At Cluni came
+the scene of final separation; the grief of Blanche can be imagined, and
+words would fail to help us to a realization of its intense sincerity.
+Her premonition was well founded; she was not to live to see Louis
+again.
+
+Once more was Blanche de Castille regent of France, a heavy burden for
+one who had lived a life of no easy indulgence and who was now sixty
+years of age. Instead of peace and rest in her declining
+years--perchance she had hoped to retire to her own convent of
+Maubuisson--she must undertake the cares of government. Truly, Saint
+Louis was sacrificing his mother for an ambition, albeit not a vain or
+selfish ambition, and whatever service he may have rendered God by
+killing some hundreds of Mohammedans in Egypt, there is no question
+about the service Blanche was rendering to him and France.
+
+To aid Blanche in her government, and also to collect an additional
+force for the crusade, Louis had left in France his brother, Alphonse de
+Poitiers, who was of real assistance to his mother. The other sons,
+however, Robert d'Artois and Charles d'Anjou, had sailed with the
+crusaders for Egypt. Blanche's first anxiety came from Henry III., who
+chose this opportunity to make warlike preparations, after he had
+refused to renew the truce with France, and who had been besieging Saint
+Louis with preposterous demands for the restoration of his lost
+provinces. But Henry contented himself with preparations, being perhaps
+held in check by fear of the Church, which threatened an interdict on
+all England if he ventured to attack France while the king was away
+fighting in her behalf. Relieved of this anxiety, Blanche was free to
+concentrate her efforts in procuring assistance for Saint Louis. But the
+worldly-minded Pope Innocent IV. was so busily engaged in his contest
+with the Emperor Frederick II. that he had little but prayers and
+blessings to bestow upon the crusading king; while Frederick was either
+unable or unwilling to contribute more than a mere pittance. At the
+close of the summer of 1249, Alphonse de Poitiers embarked on his voyage
+to lead to his brother the considerable army he had been able to
+collect. This was a new separation for Blanche, and one that involved
+her, almost at once, in the conduct of new and rather complex political
+problems.
+
+Scarcely a month after the departure of Alphonse de Poitiers, his
+father-in-law, Count Raymond of Toulouse, died, leaving as his only heir
+his daughter's husband. Blanche immediately took steps to secure to her
+son the succession, even before she was requested to do so by a message
+from him. Under the terms of the treaty of 1229, she took possession of
+the estates of the count, and appointed commissioners to receive the
+homage of the vassals on behalf of Alphonse.
+
+Meanwhile, good news had come from Louis, who had landed in Egypt and
+had taken Damietta. Frequent letters passed between the queen and her
+son; but letters were slow in reaching their destination, and the queen
+was still rejoicing over the good news when Saint Louis and his army
+were in desperate plight. At last came the letter telling of the
+disastrous battle of Mansourah,--a victory in name, but as costly in its
+consequences as a defeat,--February 8, 1250, and of the death of the
+impetuous Robert d'Artois. His army was reduced by disease and incessant
+skirmishes with the infidels and Saint Louis himself fell sick. There
+was no Blanche de Castille, no tender mother, no wife there to nurse him
+back to health.
+
+We have mentioned the wife of Saint Louis, and it may be as well to
+complete here her part in this story. She had accompanied her husband on
+the crusade, but had been left behind in Damietta with a strong garrison
+when Louis marched on to Mansourah. When the king was captured by the
+infidels, Marguerite lay ill in Damietta, hourly expecting the birth of
+her child. When the first messengers came with the news of the captivity
+of her husband she refused to believe them, and, it is said, had the
+unfortunates hanged as the bearers of false news; but there was soon no
+doubt that disaster had overtaken the Christian arms. Marguerite was
+half crazed with pain and fear; even in her sleep she fancied that the
+room was full of Saracens bent on killing her, and she would cry out
+pitifully, "Help! help!" She made an old knight, over eighty years of
+age, keep guard at the foot of her bed. Before the birth of her child
+she called this old man to her, sending everyone else from the room, and
+threw herself on her knees before him, begging him to grant her one boon
+she would ask. "Sir knight," she said, "I enjoin you, by the faith you
+have sworn to me, that, if the Saracens should take this town you will
+cut off my head before they can capture me." And the good knight, with a
+sternness characteristic of the age, replied that he would surely do as
+she bid him, for he had already resolved to kill her rather than see her
+become a Saracen captive.
+
+A son was born to the queen; in memory of the misery of these days she
+named him Jean Tristan. On the very day of the child's birth she learned
+that the Genoese and Pisan sailors, and some of the garrison, were
+preparing to abandon Damietta. It was a serious danger; for, the fleet
+once gone, what chance of rescue, or even of return to France, was there
+for the king and his army? In the midst of her pain Marguerite acted
+with a promptitude and decision far greater than one could have hoped
+for from the rather colorless, yielding woman who had so long submitted
+to the domination of her mother-in-law. She sent for the ringleaders,
+and besought them for God's sake not to imperil the safety of the king
+and the whole army: "Have pity, at least, upon this poor woman, lying
+here in pain, and wait but till she can get up again." Then, learning
+that they had just cause of complaint in that they could not get food,
+she took the responsibility of purchasing what provisions could be had
+and of feeding the sailors at the king's expense. Her prompt action
+saved the fleet for Louis. Even as it was, Damietta had to be evacuated,
+as one of the conditions of his being released, and Queen Marguerite was
+compelled to sail for Acre before she had entirely regained her health.
+
+Once released and safe at Acre, Saint Louis was urged to return at once
+to France, whither the dreadful news of his disaster had already gone to
+distress Blanche de Castille; but he had left a large part of his
+followers prisoners in the hands of the infidels, and under such
+circumstances it was useless to urge this truly noble monarch to
+consider his own wishes, or his own interests. He called a counsel of
+his barons, and announced to them: "I have come to the conclusion that,
+if I stay, my kingdom is in no danger of going to destruction, for
+Madame the Queen has many men to defend it with." He had good reason to
+rely upon _Madame la reine_, who had kept his heritage for him when he
+could not have kept it for himself. Sending back to France his brothers,
+Alphonse de Poitiers and Charles d'Anjou, Saint Louis lingered on in
+Syria.
+
+Blanche continued to rule France and to make every effort to succor her
+son in his perilous position. The death of Frederick II., in December,
+1250, gave a momentary hope of obtaining assistance from the empire or
+from the Pope. But this hope was soon dashed, for Innocent IV. was bent
+on continuing his quarrel with Frederick's successor, Conrad. Blanche,
+moreover, was seriously ill in the early part of 1251 so ill that the
+Pope wrote to discourage her from attempting to journey to Lyons to see
+him. "Your life," he wrote, "is the safeguard of so many people that you
+should use every endeavor and take every care to preserve or to recover
+the health which means so much to all." With all the benedictions and
+affectionate solicitude contained in this letter, the Pope was not
+disposed to give material assistance to Saint Louis. On the contrary, he
+ordered the preaching of a crusade, even in Brabant and Flanders,
+against the Christian emperor who was his political rival, and promised
+greater rewards to those who would engage in it than to those who were
+fighting the infidels. Blanche called a council of her vassals, who
+broke forth in violent wrath against the selfish and un-Christian
+conduct of the head of the Church. No doubt Blanche shared their
+resentment, and it is even reported that she ordered the confiscation of
+the goods of those who ventured to engage in the Pope's crusade against
+the emperor, saying: "Let those who are fighting for the Pope be
+maintained by the Pope, and go to return no more."
+
+While the affairs of the Church were in this state a new and dangerous
+movement of the common people, a movement half religious in nature, came
+to disturb France. A strange man, of wonderful eloquence, and exercising
+a powerful influence upon the peasantry, made his appearance in northern
+France. In a few weeks he had gathered veritable armies of the peasants,
+the _pastoureaux_, as they were called, who marched about the country
+after their mysterious leader, known only by the name of "the Master of
+Hungary," proclaiming that they would go to the aid of their good king.
+At first they committed no damage, but, growing bolder and becoming
+contaminated by a certain mixture of the more dangerous elements of the
+population, they began to manifest a peculiar unfriendliness toward
+priests, and soon passed to actual acts of violence. The Master of
+Hungary arrogated to himself powers almost miraculous, and the people
+believed in him. At Amiens, the first large town entered by the
+Pastoureaux, people sought out this man and knelt before him as if he
+had been a holy personage. But the priests circulated all sorts of
+stories about him: he was a magician in league with the devil; he was an
+apostate Christian, an infidel, nay, an emissary of the sultan of Egypt,
+charged with delivering into the hands of the Saracens a host of
+Christian prisoners. But, impostor or no impostor, the people had faith
+in him, and it was in vain for the priests to repeat or to concoct tales
+of his being an infidel: the very people of the most Christian nation in
+Europe were sullenly murmuring against Christ Himself. When the begging
+friars asked for alms the people snarled a refusal at them and, calling
+the first poor person in sight, gave alms, saying: "Take that; in the
+name of Mohammed, who is greater than Christ."
+
+The Master of Hungary and his satellites, preaching against the clergy
+and inciting to acts of violence, performing all the functions of
+priests and even claiming to perform miracles, advanced with their
+hordes of ignorant or vicious followers to Paris. What attitude would
+Blanche take? She had always had a heart to feel for the woes of the
+common people, and she well knew that the priests were not by any means
+always the friends of the poor, for she was not so blinded by
+religiosity as to think that the clerical habit alone could make a mere
+man something more than a man. At this particular time, too, she had
+reason to feel vexed with the clergy; was it not the Church itself that
+was most niggardly of funds to carry on the war in defence of the holy
+places? She was far too sensible a woman to look for any material help
+from this rabble which vowed to go to the rescue of the good king; but
+she was not disposed to interfere with them until she had definite proof
+of their wrongdoing. One can but suspect that she did not credit all
+that the priests reported to her of them; she herself had known and in
+some ways liked Raymond of Toulouse, whom the priests made out an arch
+fiend.
+
+When the Pastoureaux approached Paris, therefore, she gave orders that
+they should not be interfered with. Sending for the Master of Hungary,
+she treated him with respect, asked him questions, and sent him back
+with some presents. The man lost his head with vainglory at this
+reception. Returning to his followers he announced that he had so
+thoroughly enchanted the queen and her people that she would approve of
+anything they did, and that they might kill priests with impunity. In
+episcopal robes, the mitre on his head, he preached in the church of St.
+Eustace. Riots were precipitated by his followers, and the vast army
+moved on to the south, growing more and more outrageous every day.
+Blanche saw that it was time to act; she had made a mistake in supposing
+these people to be harmless, misguided peasants or religious
+enthusiasts. Orders were given to pursue and exterminate them. Scattered
+bands were overtaken here and there and dispersed, and the leaders were
+summarily hanged. But the final catastrophe was to take place at or near
+Bourges. The Pastoureaux having entered this town, engaged in looting
+and rapine, and the royal officers, thinking to confine them in the
+town, shut the gates; but the Pastoureaux broke these down, and poured
+out of the town, pursued by the enraged citizens. They were overtaken
+and brought to bay, and a veritable massacre, rather than a battle,
+ensued, for most of the Pastoureaux were poorly armed. The Master of
+Hungary was slain and torn in pieces, while his forces were dispersed.
+In a few weeks the country was quiet again. Only a few of the
+Pastoureaux really received the cross from those who had proper
+authority to give it, and went to the aid of Saint Louis.
+
+During these years we find Queen Blanche acting very frequently in a
+judicial capacity, presiding over the court of Parliament and over the
+council; she seems to have continued to take an active part in all the
+affairs of her government. And, strange to say, we do not find the name
+of any one counsellor exalted above the others, as a greater favorite or
+as more relied on by the queen; she has her ministers, but so little
+part do they seem to play that France is really ruled by the queen, not
+by the ministers. We comment upon this because it is remarkable,
+especially when we remember that, even with great kings, the names of
+the ministers are not often utterly obscured.
+
+The most interesting of the queen's activities at this time are those
+connected with the Church; there are numberless little quarrels in which
+she had to intervene and hold out for the rights of the crown, but the
+two examples that follow will suffice to show the sort of thing with
+which she had to contend. The clergy of France had accorded to Saint
+Louis a tax of one-tenth on their property, in view' of his crusade.
+Though this tax had been long due, the Abbey of Cluni, one of the
+richest and one of the most favored by the royal family, allowed month
+after month to elapse without making any move to pay. At length, in the
+early part of 1252, while the abbot was away in England, the royal
+bailli of Ma'am seized the chateau of Lourdon, belonging to the Abbey of
+Cluni. There was a tremendous uproar in the clerical camp; the Pope
+himself wrote to protest against this outrage upon the servants of God,
+and demanded of Blanche the restitution of the sequestered chateau. At
+the same time he instructed the Archbishop of Bourges to launch an
+interdict against all those who continued to hold, to guard, or to
+inhabit the chateau of Lourdon, with special exception of the queen and
+her family. Blanche had not, it appears, given the bailli any orders
+with regard to the collection of the tax, but, since he had acted, she
+sustained him; there was no persuading her to return the property of the
+abbey until the abbot had satisfied her just claims. The Pope and the
+abbot were compelled to accept defeat for the present; but after Blanche
+was dead a claim was made for indemnity, which we can only hope Saint
+Louis did not grant.
+
+Another instance in which Blanche intervened is even more to her credit,
+since it was pure humanity, not the jealous safeguarding of the rights
+of the crown, that moved her. The inhabitants of the villages of Orly,
+Chatenay, and some others were serfs of the canons of Notre Dame. Being
+unable to pay some tax imposed by their masters, the men of the
+villages--we mean not a few, but _all_ the able-bodied men--were seized
+and imprisoned in the chapter house. The horrors of the Black Hole of
+Calcutta have been made familiar to all English readers; there are few
+who realize that jails as horrible, and jailers as inhuman, were not
+infrequent in many a period of the world's history. The condition of the
+prisons of France when the courageous and devoted philanthropist John
+Howard visited them, at the close of the eighteenth century, was such as
+to beggar description: how much worse must have been a prison of the
+thirteenth century! The unfortunate peasants, with insufficient food,
+water, and air, were so crowded in the prison that several of them died.
+News of the affair coming to Queen Blanche, she humbly prayed the canons
+to release their victims, and said that she would investigate the
+matter. The canons replied that it was none of her affair, that she
+should not meddle with their serfs, "whom they could take and kill and
+do such justice on as seemed good to them." To emphasize these rights
+and to revenge themselves upon the talebearers who had reported to Queen
+Blanche, they seized the wives and children of their prisoners, and
+thrust them into the same overcrowded prison. The suffering was, of
+course, intensified; many of the miserable wretches died. The historian
+tells us that Blanche "felt great pity for the people, so tormented by
+those whose duty it was to protect them." We do not need to be told
+that; but Blanche was not of the milk-and-water kind that would have
+wasted time in _faineant_ compassion when there was suffering which her
+activity could relieve. She summoned a body of knights and citizens,
+gave them arms, marched straight to the prison, and ordered the doors to
+be broken down, herself striking the first blow, that all might see that
+she was not afraid to assume the responsibility for the act. Nor did her
+beneficent activity cease with the release of the prisoners; for she was
+determined that there should be no repetition of such tyranny if she
+could help it. She took the serfs under her special protection and
+confiscated the goods of the chapter of Notre Dame, which she held until
+such time as full satisfaction had been rendered. The serfs were
+enfranchised in consideration of an annual tax. But so far was she from
+wishing to wrong the canons, or even to interfere with their rights, if
+they had any, that she ordered the bishops of Paris, Orleans, and
+Auxerre to hold a special investigation to determine whether or not the
+people of Orly had owed the tax. With a woman of her character the
+canons vainly resorted to their favorite threat of excommunication. If
+they had excommunicated her, she would, in the light of history at
+least, have been given an absolution more purifying than any they could
+offer.
+
+For the common people the great queen had always a tender heart. It was
+a rough and cruel age, especially for those in bondage. "And since this
+Queen," says an anonymous chronicler, "had great pity for such as were
+serfs, she ordered, in several places, that they be set free in
+consideration of the payment of some other dues. This she did partly
+because of the pity she felt for the girls in this condition, because
+people would not marry them, and many of them went to ruin thereby."
+
+The last days of Blanche de Castille were drawing to a close amid sad
+and fruitless longing to see her son. Her health was failing; one after
+another of those dear to her fell ill or passed away; the dearest of all
+lingered in the Holy Land, leading a forlorn hope and deaf to the
+entreaties of his mother that he would return. She was at Melun when, in
+November, 1252, she became so ill that she hastened to return to Paris.
+She put her affairs in order and left instructions that those whom she
+had unwittingly wronged should be indemnified out of her private
+fortune. All worldly thoughts were now put aside, and she summoned the
+Bishop of Paris, took the Holy Communion, and was admitted, by the
+prelate's decree, into the Cistercian order, becoming a nun of her Abbey
+of Maubuisson. Clothed in the simple garments of the sisterhood, the
+noble queen passed, not many days later, from the scene of her useful
+labors, murmuring in her last moments the words of the prayer for those
+in extremis: _Subvenite, saticti Dei_.
+
+It was on November 26th or 27th, in her sixty-fourth year, that Blanche
+died. Over her nun's habit they placed her royal robes, and on her head
+the crown; thus clothed, and placed upon a bier ornamented with gold,
+she was borne by her sons and the great nobles through the streets of
+Paris to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The next day, after a mass for the
+dead, the body was carried in procession to Maubuisson, where another
+service was held. Here, in the choir of the chapel, the body of the
+queen was buried, and a tomb, bearing her effigy in nun's habit, was
+erected. The other convent founded by her wished to have the honor of
+guarding her heart, which, in March of the following year, was taken to
+Notre Dame du Lys by the abbess, Countess Alix de Macon.
+
+Let us pause awhile by the tomb before we attempt to review the
+character of Blanche de Castille; and meanwhile we may see how the news
+of her death was received by Saint Louis. He was at Jaffa when, after a
+long delay, the intelligence reached him. At the very first ominous
+words of the papal legate who had come to break the tidings to him Saint
+Louis gave way to uncontrollable emotion. Consolation was unavailing;
+even the clergy seemed to realize that it would have been but an
+impertinent aggravation; and for two days no one ventured to speak to
+him. Then, rousing himself from the depths of his grief, he sent for
+that best and sturdiest of his friends, the fearless, honest, blunt Sire
+de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who leaves us an account of what
+followed. When Joinville came into the presence, the king rose, and,
+stretching out his arms to him, cried in simple grief: "Ah! Seneschal! I
+have lost my mother!" Joinville replied: "Sire, I do not marvel at it,
+for she had to die; but I do marvel that you, a wise man, should mourn
+so deeply; you know that in the words of Wisdom it is said that,
+whatever grief a man have at his heart, none of it should be seen in his
+countenance; for he who does so (_i. e._, shows his grief) rejoices the
+heart of his enemies and brings sorrow to his friends." As all
+consolation would have been inadequate to the magnitude of the loss, we
+do not know that anyone could have spoken better than Joinville. The
+Seneschal continues: "Madame Marie de Vertus, a very good and pious
+woman, came to tell me that Queen Marguerite, who had rejoined the king
+a little before, was in great grief, and prayed me to go to her and
+comfort her. When I arrived I saw that she was weeping, and I said to
+her that he spoke truth who maintained that one ought not to believe
+women; for she who is dead was the person in the world whom you most
+hated, and yet you display such grief for her. And she told me that it
+was not for the Queen that she wept, but for the suffering and the grief
+of the King, and for her little daughter, now left in the care of men."
+
+There is no quality more to be admired in one who attempts to write a
+life of some great man or woman than fearless frankness; the passages we
+have given are characteristic of the _Vie de Saint Louis_, by the Sire
+de Joinville, whose straightforward bluntness of speech is an amusing
+but also a valuable quality. We shall keep Joinville in mind while
+concluding, in brief, the story of Saint Louis's return and of the
+subsequent career of Marguerite.
+
+More than a year of misery and futile battling intervened between the
+time when the news of his mother's death reached Louis and the time when
+he set sail for France. There was no hope of succor from Europe: there
+was no Queen Blanche to husband the resources of France that her son
+might continue his fight for the faith. On April 25, 1254, Saint Louis,
+accompanied by Marguerite, their little son Jean Tristan, and the
+remnant of the crusaders, embarked at Acre. The sea was rough, and when
+they were off the coast of Cyprus the vessel bearing the royal family
+ran on a sand bank. The nurses rushed frantically to arouse the queen,
+and asked her what they should do with the children. Marguerite,
+thinking all would be lost in the violence of the storm, said: "Neither
+waken them nor move them; let them go to God in their sleep." Saint
+Louis, urged to transfer himself and his family into another vessel,
+refused to do so, resolving to take the risk with those who had to
+remain and might be forced to land in Cyprus: "If I leave this vessel,
+there are on it five hundred men, each one of whom loves his life as
+much as I love mine, and who may have to stay in this island, and they
+may never return to their own country. That is why I had rather place in
+the hands of God my person, my wife, and my children, than cause such
+great suffering to the many people in this ship."
+
+Joinville narrates another accident during this voyage, one which will
+recall the instructions for extinguishing one's candle given in a
+previous chapter. It seems that one of the queen's ladies, having
+undressed her, carelessly threw over the little iron lantern in which
+the candle was burning an end of the cloth she had used to wrap up the
+queen's head. The cloth caught fire, and in its turn set fire to the
+bedding, which was all ablaze when the queen awoke. Jumping out of bed
+_toute nue_, she seized the blazing stuff and threw it overboard, and
+put out the little fire which had started in the wood of the bed. The
+cry of fire arose, however, and Joinville tells us that he went to keep
+the sailors quiet, and later asked Marguerite to go to the king, who had
+been disturbed and excited by the noise.
+
+We hear little more of Marguerite after this crusade. In spite of his
+affection and respect for her, and in spite of his gratitude for her
+conduct during his first crusade, Saint Louis did not think his wife
+capable of playing the role of Blanche de Castille, to which some say
+she unwisely aspired. When he was preparing for his second crusade, in
+1270, he not only did not leave her the regency, although she was to
+remain in France, but he took unusual care to regulate her expenditures
+and to hedge about her prerogatives. He forbade her to receive any
+presents for herself or her children, to meddle with the administration
+of justice, or to choose any person for her service without the consent
+of the council of regents. That his precautions were not altogether
+without excuse, we see when we learn that Marguerite was already
+thinking about securing her position, in case of her husband's death, by
+making her son Philippe promise under oath that he would remain in
+tutelage until he was thirty years of age; that he would take no
+councillor without her approval; that he would inform her of all designs
+hostile to her influence; that he would make no treaty with his uncle,
+Charles d'Anjou; and that he would keep these engagements secret. The
+young Philippe had himself absolved from his oath by the Pope. The
+ambition of Marguerite, however, died with the husband whom she had
+loved and whom all Europe mourned. The good King Louis is a figure so
+heroic in some of its aspects that one must pause and take thought
+before venturing on any criticism: his motives cannot be impugned, and
+it were an ungrateful task to find fault with his deeds in any
+particular.
+
+Marguerite lived on long after her husband in the convent she had
+founded in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, which she gave to the nuns in
+perpetuity, reserving only a life interest for her daughter, Blanche. It
+was here that she was living when she had the joy of hearing proclaimed
+the canonization of Louis IX., the saintly King of France. This was just
+before her death in 1295.
+
+There are figures in history which have become woefully distorted in the
+disfiguring mists of centuries, and others which have been not less
+wronged by prejudice, partisanship, or conscious or unconscious
+misrepresentation. These--at least some of these--have been in part
+indemnified and set right before the world: Louis XI. in France, and his
+contemporary Richard III. in England; Cleopatra, Catherine de Medici,
+Mary of England, all these and a host of others, we are told now and
+then, have been misunderstood by the world; nay, in this century of
+universal charity, this century which is undertaking the task of
+righting all the wrongs accumulated from the past, one can find
+apologists for the enemy of mankind himself. The moral of this homily
+is--it may be apparent to some of my readers--that if you are either
+very good or very bad you get much talked about in history: there will
+be some to defend you no matter how bad you are, and some to denounce
+you no matter how good you are. But if you simply do your duty, without
+fear and without advertisement, little will be said of you; history, at
+least in traditions still partly ruling, does not dignify with the
+epithet "great" the steady day-laborers who go about their task and
+complete it in silence. This, I would imply, is partly the reason why
+Blanche de Castille has never been heralded as great, and why her work
+in the upbuilding of the French monarchy is taken as a matter of course,
+and not praised like, for example, the more brilliant exploits of the
+"Grande Monarque" who was to do so much to undermine the power of that
+monarchy.
+
+The fame of the mother is eclipsed by the peculiar glory of the son; but
+would it not be fair to ask how much of the excellence of Louis the man,
+how much of the glory of Louis the king, was due to Blanche de Castille?
+It cannot be questioned that she found France in a condition most
+perilous, threatened with the loss of all that two reigns had won for
+the royal power. A glance at the history of her career will show that
+she not only averted this danger, but that the crown was stronger when
+she began to relinquish her authority than it had been under Louis VIII.
+She reduced her rebellious vassals to submission; she more than held her
+own against England; she ended the war against Raymond of Toulouse, and
+reserved for France the control, immediate or ultimate, of the greater
+part of his dominions; and these things she accomplished, not merely by
+force, but by wise and patient policy. Louis IX. owed his crown to
+Blanche's care as regent; it is not improbable that he owed her as much
+during the years when he himself was on the throne and she but a
+counsellor. History is silent on many points in this connection, but it
+might be noted that it was through disregard of her earnest advice that
+he entered on the crusade which resulted so disastrously. She knew that,
+even if it had been successful from the point of view of the Church, it
+could but be dangerous, perhaps even ruinous, for France. This is one
+case in which we know Saint Louis rejected his mother's guidance, and
+what came of it is matter of history; might there not be many another
+act of his, more successful in its issue, for which the credit should go
+to Blanche?
+
+As a queen, Blanche de Castille was more than capable; it is only the
+absence of great battles, great social, religious, and economic
+movements, during her ascendency, that hinders our calling her, without
+reservation, a great queen. When we look at Blanche the woman, we are
+confronted with a like difficulty. Shall we say she was a saint? Her
+son, the son whom she bore, whom she reared with unexampled care, whom
+she watched over all her life, has been called a saint, and there is no
+one to say him nay. Shall we say that the mother of a saint is, _ex
+officio_, or even by courtesy, also a saint? We cannot claim sanctity
+for Queen Blanche: there was in her a touch of the temper of her
+grand-mother, Eleanor of Guienne of wicked memory, or mayhap a trace of
+the Plantagenet. It is interesting to note that the best qualities of
+the vigorous Henry II. tempered the woman's nature of this daughter of
+Spain and gave her the stamina, the unconquerable spirit, which alone
+could save her. This Plantagenet temper is under excellent control in
+Queen Blanche; so excellent, indeed, that under some circumstances she
+seems cold. She is not cold, she is cool, a very different thing; no
+danger, no excitement, no sudden gust of resentment at an insult, can
+make her lose her head and act rashly. She is a thorough politician,
+making her feelings, her emotions, subservient to her will, and even, as
+we have hinted, playing the lover for the sake of controlling an amorous
+and uncertain vassal. Danger nerves her to action, and she acts with
+promptitude and firmness. At the defects in her character we have
+already hinted in part; the fundamental one, when we consider Blanche
+the woman, was her love of power. Ambitious she was; and yet, when we
+say this, we must not forget that she sought power not for herself, but
+for her son. How quietly she relinquishes her authority, and how ready
+she is, even when that authority is at its height, to tell Thibaud de
+Champagne that he owes his preservation to "the great goodness of my
+son, the King, who came to your aid"! But it was her jealousy of
+Marguerite de Provence that was the great blemish on Blanche's
+character. It was a meanness unworthy of a nature so generous and so
+faithful; we can attempt no defence, we can only express regret. Her
+personality exerted a powerful influence over those with whom she came
+in contact, and from all the best men of her time she received due meed
+of praise. Compare her with other women of her day, and there is none
+who can be placed beside Blanche _la bonne reine_, or Blanche _la bonne
+mere_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY AND LOVE
+
+BESIDE such a figure as that of Blanche de Castille, the women of whom
+we might next speak would seem pale ghosts, mere masks and shadows; and,
+even then, not always pleasing ones. There are, in fact, no immediate
+successors of Blanche and her daughter-in-law in the history of France;
+there is an interregnum, so to speak, of good, great, even of notorious
+women; in this inter-regnum, therefore, let us see how chivalry and
+literature were treating woman, what was the ideal, and what was the
+real woman in the artistic world at this time.
+
+Between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries Europe saw the birth, the
+growth, the culmination, the decay, and finally the displacement of
+those ideals and those customs which we associate with the word
+"chivalry." The subject of chivalry, interesting in itself, is also one
+of peculiar interest for us, since chivalry affected in no small degree
+the condition of women; but with its primal origin we shall not attempt
+to deal: we shall dig up no roots, but only do our best to describe the
+glorious tree itself and the soil in which it flourished. We shall find
+that chivalry, like all other earthly things, has its leprous spots,
+which one must keep out of sight if one would pour forth genuine and
+unchecked enthusiasm; yet the good and the bad alike must be understood
+if we would have a just conception of the whole.
+
+We have seen in the case of the troubadours something of the nature of
+the extravagant amorous devotion avowed for his lady by the knightly
+poet. Though this exaggerated passion and romance is one of the
+concomitants, it is not the fundamental idea or the best part of
+chivalry. Originally, perhaps, a mere association for mutual defence and
+support, the order of knighthood soon came to have a deeper and a better
+purpose, a wider significance; it assumed the sanctity of a religious
+institution, for which long years of careful preparation were deemed
+necessary, and which imposed serious duties.
+
+To defend the weak and the oppressed was what the soldier of God swore
+to do; and first in the list of those needing his defence were women.
+The knight was not only the sworn defender of woman from all physical
+wrong and oppression, but he must guard the honor of her name. Courteous
+and gentle he must be toward women himself, and from others less gentle
+he must compel at least outward respect. In the statutes of many an
+order of knighthood we find provisions like those set forth by Louis de
+Bourbon when, in 1363, he established the order of the Golden Shield:
+"He enjoined (the knights) to abstain from swearing and blaspheming the
+name of God; above all, he enjoined them to honor _dames et
+damoiselles_, not submitting to hear ill spoken of them; because from
+them, after God, comes the honor men receive; so that speaking ill of
+women, who from the weakness of their sex have no means of defending
+themselves, is losing all sense of honor, and shaming and dishonoring
+oneself." It was also about this time that Marshal Boucicaut established
+the order of the Knights of the Green Shield, fourteen in number, whose
+special purpose was the defence of women, and on whose shields was a
+blazon representing a woman clothed in white. This same sentiment we
+find persisting even in Brantome: "If an honest woman would maintain her
+firmness and constancy, her devoted servitor must not spare even his
+life to defend her if she runs the least risk in the world, whether of
+her honor or of evil-speaking; even as I have seen some who have stopped
+all the wicked tongues of the court when they came to speak ill of their
+ladies, whom, according to the devoirs of chivalry, we are bound to
+serve as champions in their affliction."
+
+The devotion to woman which we find becoming the dominant feature of the
+chivalrous ideal rises at times to sheer extravagance, mere moonshine
+madness. A knight vows devotion to his lady-love; to prove that he is
+the truest lover in the world and she the fairest dame, he wears a patch
+over one eye and engages in mortal combat with anyone who ventures to
+smile at this absurdity. Another takes his station on the highway and
+compels every passing knight to joust with him, because he has vowed to
+break three hundred lances in thirty days in the honor of his lady. Or
+there is Geoffrey Rudel, who falls in love with the Countess of Tripoli
+on hearsay; they say she is the most beautiful and lovable woman in the
+world; therefore he loves her, and therefore he goes on a crusade that
+he may see the lady. On the voyage he falls ill, and lands in Tripoli
+sick nigh unto death. The lovely countess, touched by the tales of his
+devotion, comes to his bedside; at once the glow of health returns to
+the dying lover, who praises God for preserving his life long enough to
+permit him to see his lady. When he died, soon after,--for the sight of
+the lady did not effect a permanent cure,--the countess had him buried
+in the church of the Templars, while she herself took the veil.
+
+But if there is moonshine madness in the ideals of chivalry, there are
+also better things. Devotion to woman rises to the point of adoration;
+why should it not, when at its base is really the fervor of worship, the
+mystic worship of her whom the Middle Ages delighted to honor, Mary, the
+Mother of God? Let us content ourselves here with what Lecky has so well
+said in his _History of European Morals_: "Whatever may be thought of
+its theological propriety, there can be little doubt that the Catholic
+reverence for the Virgin has done much to elevate and purify the ideal
+of woman, and to soften the manners of men. It has had an influence
+which the worship of the Pagan goddesses could never possess, for these
+had been almost destitute of moral beauty, and especially of that kind
+of moral beauty which is peculiarly feminine. It supplied in a great
+measure the redeeming and ennobling element in that strange amalgam of
+religious, licentious, and military feeling which was formed around
+women in the age of chivalry, and which no succeeding change of habit or
+belief has wholly destroyed."
+
+The fact that this love of the Virgin finally became a recognized force
+is a proof of how much stronger are love and romance than theology and
+dogma; for the strict religious theory of the Church had always been
+opposed to the elevation of women to a very high plane of adoration.
+While the Fathers of the Church praised and practised chastity as the
+highest virtue, and in consequence honored virgins above all others,
+they never forgot that it was the sin of woman which had "brought death
+into the world and all our woe"; they never forgot to twit the daughters
+of Eve with this fact, and to call them _vas infirmius_--"the weaker
+vessel." All through the ages when Christianity was struggling to
+maintain its own, the saints and martyrs, the holy hermits, in whom the
+Church delighted, fled the very sight of woman, and shuddered at her
+touch as at a contamination. Yet, in spite of this, or along with this,
+there was growing the adoration of a woman, the mother of Him whom the
+world called the Son of God. Little was known about her; so much the
+better for the pious hagiologists, who thought they did no wrong in
+piecing out scant fact with abundant legend. A regular cult of the
+Virgin arose, reaching such proportions that the Church had to do
+something to recognize it. Numerous festivals were established in her
+honor, some with the sanction of the Church, some without that sanction,
+some celebrated throughout Christendom, some only locally: the
+Annunciation, the Visitation, the Purification, the Assumption.
+
+The mystic worship, the tendency to find hidden meanings in things of
+the most ordinary appearance to the lay eye, the extravagant symbolism,
+were at their height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
+scholastic theologians and sermon writers applied their fantastic
+methods to all phases of the religious life; so we must not be surprised
+to find them treating even the Virgin in this way. One of the
+extraordinary instances which we can give occurs in a sermon delivered
+in Paris by the Chancellor of the university, Stephen Langton, later
+Archbishop of Canterbury. His name, by the way, is Latinized for us as
+_Stephanus de Langeduna_, whence it was easy and flattering to deduce
+_Stephanus Linguae tonantis_. As a text the preacher takes nothing more
+nor less than a popular song, _Bele Aalis main se leva_, of which the
+following is the sense: "Sweet Alice arose in the early morn, dressed
+herself and adorned her fair body, and went into the garden. There she
+found five flowrets, of which she made a chaplet covered with roses. By
+my faith, therein has she betrayed thee, thou who lovest not." It is a
+little love song; and the author, whoever he may be,--probably some
+forgotten strolling minstrel who saw the girl go into the garden and
+wrought the incident to suit his fancy,--certainly had no religious
+intent. But Stephen Langton endeavors to make a mystic application of
+the song to the Virgin, and, as he says, "thus to turn evil into good."
+Let me quote a few lines of the sermon to show how this _tour de force_
+was accomplished. _"Videamus quae sit_ Bele Aeliz.... Cele est bele Aeliz
+_de qua sic dicitur: Speciosa ut gemma splendida ut luna et clara ut
+sol, rutilans quasi Lucifer inter sidera_, etc.... _Hoc nomen Aeliz
+dicitur ab a quod est sine et lis litis, quasi sine lite, sine
+reprehensione, sine mundana faece._" It may be of interest to translate
+this as a specimen of the sermon of the first quarter of the thirteenth
+century: "Let us now see who is Bele Aeliz.... She is bele Aeliz of whom
+it is said: Beautiful as a jewel, shining as the moon and brilliant as
+the sun, glistening as Lucifer among the stars, etc.... This name Aeliz
+is formed from a, which means without, and _lis, litis_, which is as
+much as to say without dispute, without blame, without mixture of the
+dregs of the world." The worthy theologian then proceeds to what is
+undoubtedly the most difficult problem of his interpretation to
+demonstrate the connection of the garden, the chaplet, and the five
+flowers with the Virgin. "Who are these flowers? Faith, hope, charity,
+humility, virginity. These flowers did the Holy Ghost find in the
+blessed Virgin Mary..." The closing verses are, he says, directed
+against pagans, heretics, blasphemers, whom he scripturally addresses
+thus: "Depart, ye accursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the
+devil and his angels."
+
+The enthusiasm of the clergy in behalf of the Virgin was matched by that
+of the people. Nothing was more popular than the hymn to the Virgin,
+scarcely distinguishable, in the ardor of some specimens preserved to
+us, from the contemporary love songs to women of flesh and blood. Clerks
+and laymen composed these songs, vying with each other in the fervor of
+the sentiments they expressed, writing in Latin, in French, in mixed
+Latin and French, praising the mere physical beauty and grace of her
+whom they called _rose des roses et fleur des fleurs_. One can read
+these things without shock only when one remembers that there was
+nothing but devotion of a purely spiritual kind intended by them, a fact
+of which it is sometimes hard to persuade oneself. As an example, and
+not an extreme one, it might do to substitute merely the name _Marie_
+for that of _Aalis_ in the song used for Langton's sermon.
+
+Besides these songs there were plays representing miracles ascribed to
+the Virgin, and legends without end grew up in which she was the
+intercessor for poor mortality. She becomes almost identified with the
+attribute of Mercy assigned to the Godhead, and some of the souls
+alleged to have been saved by her are not always worth the saving,
+according to modern standards of morality. A legend, repeated in many
+forms, tells us, for example, of a clerk of Chartres (presumably a clerk
+in the cathedral), "proud, vain, rude, and so worldly and licentious in
+his habits that he could not be restrained." With all his rakish ways,
+however, there was one thing that this man of God never omitted to do:
+"He would never pass before the image of Our Lady... without kneeling;"
+and once on his knees, "his face wet with tears, he saluted her many
+times most humbly, and beat his breast." Now the clerk was killed by an
+enemy of his, and then the world began to speak ill of him, and, on
+account of his notorious bad habits, they buried his body in a ditch
+outside Chartres. Thirty days, or nights, afterward, "she from whom
+springs all pity, all mildness and sweetness and love, and who never
+forgets her servants," appeared in a dream to one of the other clerks
+and reproached him bitterly for the dishonor done her servitor, of whose
+piety she then told him. The clergy of the city marched out to the grave
+of the clerk; and when it was opened they found "a flower in his mouth,
+so fresh and full of bloom that it seemed as if it had just blown
+there"; while the tongue with which he used to praise the Virgin was
+preserved from corruption, "as clear as is a rose in May." The moral of
+this story, one would think, would be anything but salutary; it is only
+when one recognizes the simple, unsophisticated piety which inspired it,
+and reflects upon its teaching of greater gentleness, greater charity in
+judging others, that one can admire it.
+
+To the mediaeval mind, indeed, the Virgin was not very unlike a heroine
+of romance, and it was no disrespect to deck her out in fancy as
+gorgeously as some fair Elaine or Iseut. The story of this latter
+heroine, whose name no two will spell alike,--Iseut, Ysoult, Isolde,
+Isout, Ysolt,--is one typical of the age of romance and chivalry, and
+one which we shall give, despite its familiarity. By way of preface it
+may be well to remark that the story has been told so often that the
+variations introduced by this or that reviser are not to be
+distinguished from the original.
+
+The mother of Tristan was Isabelle, sister of King Mark of Cornwall,
+who, dying when her son was born, asked that he be called Tristan, or
+Tristram, "that is as much as to say, sorrowful birth." The boy was
+hated by his uncle, King Mark, who tried to make away with him; but the
+youth escaped to France, where he won the love of King Faramond's
+daughter, and was in consequence compelled to flee again to Cornwall,
+where a temporary reconciliation with Mark was effected. Then there came
+out of Ireland a knight, Sir Morhoult, to claim tribute due to the Irish
+king by King Mark. Tristan fought with the stranger, wounded him unto
+death, and was himself wounded by the poisoned lance of his adversary.
+Only in the country where the poison was brewed was there hope of succor
+for the wounded hero; and accordingly Tristan set out for Ireland, in a
+boat without sails and without rudder, albeit well victualled. The
+helpless boat, however, bore its precious burden safely to Ireland.
+
+The wounded knight, who concealed his real name, was kindly received by
+the Irish king, who gave him into the charge of his wife and his
+daughter, La Belle Iseut, both skilled leeches. The latter, fair and
+golden-haired, altogether lovely, became the special attendant of the
+wounded knight: "And when she had searched his wound, she found in the
+bottom of his wound that there was poison, and within a little while she
+healed him, and therefore Tristan cast great love to la Belle Iseut, for
+she was at that time the fairest lady in the world, and then Sir Tristan
+taught her to harp, and she began to have a great fantasy unto Sir
+Tristan." Unfortunately the mother of Iseut discovered by chance that
+Tristan was the slayer of her brother, Sir Morhoult. Tristan must leave,
+and nothing but the love of Iseut and the honor of the king saved him
+from the wrath of the queen and enabled him to escape unmolested.
+
+For long years we hear no more of la Belle Iseut in Tristan's life,
+which is wholly devoted to winning himself a place at the Round Table
+and putting to shame his wicked uncle, King Mark. But he had never
+forgotten Iseut, and praised her so enthusiastically that King Mark
+conceived a desire to have her for his wife. Tristan, despatched to
+Ireland to fetch Iseut to be his uncle's bride, was kindly received on
+account of his honorable mission, and of the great renown he had won. He
+made a formal demand for the princess: "I desire that ye will give me la
+Belle Iseut, your daughter, not for myself, but for mine uncle King
+Mark, that shall have her to wife, for so have I promised him." "Alas,"
+said the king, "I had liever than all the land that I have ye would wed
+her yourself." "Sir, an I did, then were I shamed for ever in this
+world, and false of my promise."
+
+All was made ready for the voyage, and la Belle Iseut was committed to
+the care of Tristan: "a fairer couple or one more meet for marriage had
+no man seen." She was accompanied into the strange land by her
+gentlewoman, dame Brangian, to whom the Queen of Ireland had given a
+powerful love philtre to be administered to the husband and wife on the
+wedding day: whoso drank of that philtre with another, should love that
+other with a love that knows no ending. By a fatal error, it was to
+Tristan and Iseut that the philtre was given during the voyage; and from
+that time an invincible passion drew them toward each other. Love so
+overmastered Tristan that he was false to his knightly vows, false to
+the trust imposed, and yet happy in his guilty love for the betrothed of
+King Mark. And Iseut returned his love, and moaned at the thought of
+Mark.
+
+When they reached the court of Cornwall some stratagem must be devised
+to prevent the King from discovering that his bride had been unfaithful;
+but it is always easy for the romancer to extricate himself from
+entanglements that seem to the ordinary mind hopelessly involved, and
+the solution generally suggests fresh complications. In this case it was
+arranged that the lady-in-waiting, Brangian, should personate the bride
+at night, trusting that King Mark, fuddled with wine and sleep, would
+not discover the fraud. The scheme was entirely successful; King Mark
+suspected no wrong. But la Belle Iseut, that gentle lady whom all loved,
+determined to leave no witness to the shame of herself and Tristan,
+hired two murderers to slay the faithful Brangian! More pitiful than
+Iseut, the murderers were smitten with compassion and merely carried off
+their victim and left her bound fast to a tree, from which she was
+rescued by the gallant Saracen knight, Sir Palamedes. Palamedes, indeed,
+was also one of Iseut's lovers, and had loved her in Ireland before she
+met Tristan. But Iseut scorned him now as she had scorned him then: her
+whole heart was given to Tristan, for Tristan was a knight of greater
+prowess than he. Iseut loved Tristan, and not her husband; the husband
+at length grew suspicious, and the lover was forced to flee for his
+life.
+
+Many adventures befell him, but his heart was still with la Belle Iseut.
+Wounded once more by a poisoned arrow, he could no longer return to
+Iseut to be cured, and bethought him of his cousin, Iseut de la Blanche
+Main, a lady skilled in surgery, who lived in Brittany. To Iseut of the
+White Hand, then, went Tristan, and a new and most curious episode in
+the love story began. For the new Iseut cured Tristan, but fell in love
+with him, and loved him passionately. He could not return her love, for
+he had not forgotten la Belle Iseut, but out of gratitude he married
+her; and Iseut of the White Hand, not knowing that she had not all her
+husband's love, was happy in what she had.
+
+Tristan made a confidant of his wife's brother, Peredor, telling him
+such marvels of the beauty of la Belle Iseut that Peredor was half in
+love by hearsay, and quite in love when he and Tristan journeyed into
+Cornwall and saw the lady. She seemed for a moment flattered by the new
+love, and played the coquette till Tristan, driven to madness, wandered
+off into the forest; and the heart of Iseut was sad and sick of longing
+and regret. Here he dwelt, till one day he was captured by King Mark,
+who failed to recognize his nephew in the naked madman, and confined him
+within the high walled garden. But la Belle Iseut came forth to see the
+man, and Tristan, knowing her even in his madness, turned away his head
+and wept. Then a little dog that Iseut had always with her, smelt
+Tristan, and knew him, and leapt upon him; for this dog had Iseut kept
+by her every day since Tristan gave her to Iseut in the first days of
+their love. And thereupon Iseut fell down in a swoon, and so lay a great
+while; and when she might speak, she said: "My lord Sir Tristan, blessed
+be God ye have your life! And now I am sure you shall be discovered by
+this little dog, for she will never leave you; and also I am sure that
+as soon as my lord King Mark shall know you he will banish you out of
+the country of Cornwall or else he will destroy you. For God's sake,
+mine own lord, grant King Mark his will, and then draw you unto the
+court of King Arthur, for there are ye beloved."
+
+King Mark banished Tristan forever, and to the court of King Arthur went
+Tristan, winning there ever fresh fame, until finally King Mark himself,
+moved by jealousy and envy, came to destroy Tristan. But the good Arthur
+reconciled uncle and nephew, and Tristan went to free Cornwall from a
+horde of invading Saxons. The intrigue with Iseut was renewed, and Mark
+confined Tristan in a dungeon, whence he was released only by an
+insurrection of Mark's oppressed subjects. Iseut eloped with him, and
+the two wandered in the forest like true lovers, this fair lady and her
+bold knight, and were finally received at Joyeuse Garde by the gallant
+Lancelot, where they dwelt till a fresh reconciliation with King Mark
+brought about the restoration of Iseut to her husband.
+
+We must not forget the other Iseut, the white-handed lady whom Tristan
+married and left behind in Brittany. The fact of her existence came
+again to his recollection now, and he returned to her. She was in dire
+distress and longing for her husband; but from her caressing arms he
+fled again to put down a rebellion in his dominions. Once more sorely
+wounded, once more he was cured by the white hands of his wife, whom he
+nevertheless soon afterward abandoned to renew the intrigue with the
+rival Iseut in Cornwall. But he was again discovered and put to flight
+by the jealous husband. The spirit of restlessness would not let him be
+quiet with his wife, the knight must be up and doing; and while he
+engaged in a reckless adventure he was grievously wounded, so grievously
+that death seemed nigh and not to be put off by the ministrations of
+Iseut of the White Hand. Tristan sent a messenger in haste for la Belle
+Iseut: "Come with all speed, if you love me! And that I may know you are
+on the ship let the sails be white; if you cannot come, let the sails be
+black." Iseut hastened toward her lover, with feverish impatience,
+blaming winds and waves and slow messengers. Meanwhile, the neglected
+wife, Iseut of the White Hand, discovered the truth and grew wildly
+jealous. Tristan lay on his bed in agony, waiting for news of the ship
+bearing la Belle Iseut. The jealous wife, too, kept watch, and when the
+white sails of the vessel told her that her rival was coming, was almost
+at hand, jealousy got the mastery: "I see the ship," she cried to
+Tristan. "What color are her sails?" asked he. "Black, all black," she
+cried. The sick knight fell back upon his bed, moaning out reproaches
+upon the Iseut who had forsaken him in his need:
+
+        "Amie Yoslt! treis fez a dit,
+        A la quarte rent l'esperit."
+
+(Iseut, my love! three times he cried, at the fourth he rendered up his
+soul.)
+
+"Iseut is come out of the ship; in the street she hears the
+lamentations.... An old woman told her: 'Lovely lady, so help me God, we
+have here a sorrow greater than men ever had before: _Tristan li pruz,
+li francs, est mort_ (Tristan the brave and noble is dead).'... All
+dishevelled went Iseut through the streets and into the palace where the
+body lay. Then she turned her to the east and prayed for him pitifully:
+'Tristan, my love, when I see you lie dead, I should live no longer. You
+are dead because of my love, and I die, ami, of grief because I could
+not come in time.' Then she lay herself beside him, embraced him,... and
+in that same moment yielded up her spirit."
+
+The reader will note almost at once the similarity of this tale to one
+famous in Greek legend, that of Theseus and the Minotaur; and there are
+several details, necessarily omitted in the summary we have given, which
+tend to make this similarity still more marked. But the matter in which
+we are more interested is the character of the heroine. One might remark
+that there are certain features in la Belle Iseut not very unlike those
+of Andromeda, so readily consoled by Dionysius. The lady Iseut is a
+typical heroine of the romances, and as such we may comment upon those
+of her characteristics which seem most noteworthy.
+
+The love motive of the romance is, to begin with, as strong as the
+motive of pure adventure; it is, indeed, the love story which serves as
+the thread to bind the whole together. This shows a marked change in the
+importance of women in the eyes of those who wrote to please the world.
+But the relations of the heroine to the hero are most amazing. Not only
+is Iseut very forward, more than ready to confess her love and to give
+full response to that of Tristan, but she is all this with the full
+consciousness that she is doing wrong. The poet, realizing that the
+moral of his story might be brought in question, the love potion: being
+under the spell of enchantment the lovers are not responsible.
+
+Whether we shall acquit the lovers at the bar of romantic justice or
+not, we cannot forget that their entire story is based upon guilty
+passion, which seems to have a peculiar fascination for the romancer: it
+is the same, to cite but one example out of the many that could be
+adduced, in the story of Lancelot and Guinever, with the episode of
+Elaine. To be sure, in both cases we have mentioned, the highest honor
+is denied the hero: it is not for the guilty Tristan, false to his
+knightly oath, nor yet for the chivalrous but guilty Lancelot to win the
+Holy Grail; and we are not teft in doubt, we are told that only the pure
+in life could win that honor. And then for Iseut, though she is fair and
+much beloved, there is a pathetic end, an end that brings no crowning
+happiness, no reward; but punishment.
+
+One trait in the character of Iseut is disconcerting to those who
+cherish romantic ideals: her cruelty. We could forgive her the love for
+Tristan, and we learn to feel for her, as we read the romance, some part
+of the passion that instilled itself into Tristan's veins with the love
+draught; but what shall we say when she deliberately plans the murder of
+a defenceless woman, and one who had performed service unexampled in its
+fidelity and sacrifice?
+
+If Iseut represented the poetic ideal in the age of chivalry, was the
+real woman of that age like Iseut? We can answer, unhesitatingly, no.
+The conditions of life in the romances were very highly idealized, and
+certain forms in the romance became purely conventional. The heroine
+must always be more beautiful than tongue can tell, and she must, in the
+end, win her lover, or be merciful to him, according as she began in
+disdain or in love sickness. Numerous adventures, wildly fantastic in
+character, preceded this consummation; but readers even in that day got
+to such a point that their jaded palates could no longer be tickled even
+by the choicest extravagances. Men knew that in real life they did not
+love in that way; and women knew it, too, though they were perhaps
+slower to confess it. At any rate, the reaction from the extreme type of
+romantic idealization of woman began even while the romance of chivalry
+was trying to persuade its readers that all women were like Iseut,
+Guinever, Elaine, and that these were angels.
+
+The reaction against the ideal of chivalry in literature took two main
+directions, the one, more purely comic or realistic, representing the
+woman of the middle classes, the other, more intellectual and satiric,
+representing woman in general but especially the lady. The first is
+represented, we may say, by the great _Roman du Renard_ and those short
+popular tales which strolling minstrels were wont to recite, the
+_Fabliaux_. The second we find chiefly in the _Roman de la Rose_ and its
+numerous progeny.
+
+Renard is, of course, the central personage in the gigantic beast epic,
+but we hear not a little of his wife Hermeline or Erme, of madam wolf,
+Dame Hersent, and of Harouge, the leopardess. They play before us a
+little game, which we know is the game of life as women lived it in the
+days when Renard was still a famous personage. To give but one episode,
+from _Renard le Nouveau_, by Jacquemart Gelee, end of the thirteenth
+century, Renard becomes the confidant of Noble (the lion), and learns of
+his amour with Dame Harouge; forthwith the subtle Renard begins to
+intrigue, until at last Harouge becomes his mistress. Besieged in
+Maupertuis by Noble, Renard sends a flattering love letter to each of
+his old flames, the lioness, the wolf, and the leopardess. The three
+ladies are delighted with the proposals of the charming Maitre Renard.
+They draw lots to see which shall possess forever the affections of the
+irresistible Lothario; the lot falls to Dame Hersent, and the three
+ladies write a joint letter to inform Renard of their choice, a choice
+not very pleasing to Renard, who is, moreover, provoked because they
+have exchanged confidences. His revenge is at once planned. Going to
+court dressed as a charlatan, he gives to Noble a precious talisman by
+means of which, he says, any deceived husband can learn of his wife's
+infidelities; and Noble, Isengrin (the wolf), and the leopard are eager
+to test the virtues of the talisman. The ensuing dreadful revelations
+may be imagined. The guilty wives, well beaten by their wrathful
+husbands, flee from the court and are kindly received by crafty Renard,
+who forthwith establishes a harem. It is a pleasantly humorous story,
+and the conditions of real life are distinctly reflected, while the
+satiric intent is not enough to distort the reflection.
+
+In the _Fabliaux_, however, woman is even more clearly portrayed as she
+really was, or at least as she seemed to the men. A large part of Old
+French literature, as one critic has remarked, is devoted to exposing
+and discussing, the misfortunes of marriage; and in these relations the
+deceived husband is, we might say, clown paramount. The authors of the
+_Fabliaux_--which were written to amuse the bourgeois as well as the
+knight--"invented or discovered anew talismans that revealed their
+misfortunes (as husbands): the enchanted mantle which grows either
+longer or shorter suddenly when put on by an unfaithful wife, the cup
+from which none but happy husbands can drink.... Our tellers of tales
+invented a whole cycle of feminine tricks and ruses.... The women of the
+Fabliaux shrink from no stratagem: they can persuade their husbands, one
+that he is covered by an invisible cloak, another that he is a monk, or
+a third that he is dead." Contending with them or seeking to outwit them
+is of no avail, says the author of these tales, for _mout se femme de
+renardise_,--many a foxy trick does woman know,--and _fols est qui femme
+espie et guette,_--he is a fool who spies upon a woman.
+
+The story of one of these triumphs of beauty over wisdom will illustrate
+the best type of the _Fabliaux_; it is called the _Lai d'Aristote_. When
+Alexander had conquered India, he rested in shameful sloth, a slave to
+love for a young Hindoo princess. Aristotle, master of all wisdom,
+reproved his quondam pupil for this neglect of grave matters; and the
+Hindoo girl, perceiving Alexander's unhappy frame of mind, discovered
+what had produced it. She will be revenged on the crabbed old scholar;
+ere noon of the next day she will make him forget grammar and logic, if
+Alexander will only allow her free scope, and he shall see Aristotle's
+defeat if he will watch from a window opening on the garden. In the
+early morn, while the dew was on the grass and the birds were just
+beginning to sing, she tripped out into the garden, her corsage loosely
+fastened, her golden hair waving wildly down her neck; and as she picked
+her way hither and thither among the flowers, her petticoat daintily
+lifted, she sang sweet little songs of love. Master Aristotle, at his
+books, heard the singer, and "such a sweet memory she stirred in his
+heart that he shut his book." "Alas," he said, "what is the matter with
+my heart? Here am I, old and bald, pale and thin, and a philosopher more
+sour than any yet known or heard of." The damsel gathered flowers and
+wove a garland for herself, singing the while so sweetly, so enticingly,
+that the sour philosopher gave way, opened his window, and talked to
+her, nay, came out to her and courted her like a very lover, offering to
+risk for her sake body and soul. She asked not so much by way of proof
+of his devotion. "It is merely a little whim of mine," she said, "if you
+will gratify me in that, I might love you." The whim is, that he should
+let her ride about the garden on his back. "And you must have a saddle
+on: I shall go more gracefully." Love won the day, and there was the
+foremost scholar in the world prancing about on all fours like a colt,
+with a saucy girl on his back, when Alexander appeared at the window.
+The pedagogue was not dismayed; with the saddle and bridle upon him, he
+looked up at the king: "Sire, tell me if I was not right to fear love
+for you, in all the ardor of youth, since love has harnessed me thus, I
+who am old and withered! I have combined precept and example: it is for
+you to profit by them."
+
+Sometimes the poet of the Fabliau pauses to describe his heroine and her
+costume; now it is a lively country maiden, barefooted, with her clothes
+all wet from the armful of water-cress she has gathered; now it is a
+coquette finishing her toilette before the mirror, which she makes a
+little page hold while she binds up her tresses and flirts with him; and
+now it is a party of ladies seated in some castle bower, embroidering
+heraldic devices on the banners of their knights. Then there is a jolly
+story of three _commeres_ of Paris, the wife of Adam de Gonesse, her
+niece Marie Clipe, and Dame Tifaigne, milliner, who tell their husbands
+that they are going on a pilgrimage, oh! a pious pilgrimage, on the
+feast of the Three Kings of Cologne. They evade their watchful but too
+credulous spouses, and here they are seated at an inn table, where one
+gets "as good wine as ever grew; it is health itself; 'tis a wine clear,
+sparkling, strong, fine, fresh, soft to the tongue, and sweet and
+pleasant to swallow." The good cheer begins with much eating of fat
+goose, fritters, onions, cheese, almonds, pears, and nuts, while the
+trio joins in singing:
+
+        "Commeres, menons bon revel!
+        Tels vilains l'escot paiera
+        Qui ja du vin n'ensaiera."
+
+(Gossips, let's revel and frolic to our heart's content! The poor devil
+who has never put away wine will pay the score.) And then, the meal
+over, they come "out of the tavern into the street," not a little
+exhilarated, one may fancy, by this famous wine, and away they go
+singing to the fair.
+
+Not all the pictures of women are as innocently amusing or mirthful as
+this one; on the contrary, the general attitude of the authors of the
+_Fabliaux_ is distinctly unflattering, not to say hostile. Sometimes it
+is merely one of the infinite variations on the idea of the scarcity of
+virtuous wives; it is Chicheface, the cow who feeds on virtuous wives,
+and who is all but starved to death, while Bigorne, with less rigorous
+ideas as to the morals of her food, is choked, fit to burst. But in
+general the notion prevails, as one writer himself puts it, that "woman
+is of too feeble intellect; she laughs at nothing, she cries at nothing;
+she will turn from love to hate in a moment. The strong hand alone can
+control her; and yet, beating is useless, for her faults are inherent;
+nature made her captious, obstinate, perverse; she is an inferior
+creature, by nature degraded and vicious."
+
+But slightly different from this is the sentiment of the _Roman de la
+Rose_, when we take this huge work in its complete and most influential
+form. The _Roman de la Rose_, to rehearse a few well-known facts, was
+composed between 1225 and 1275 by two poets, one writing later than the
+other and under somewhat different inspiration. The story is
+allegorical, and its main thread has to do with the adventures of a
+young man, at once the hero and the poet, in his attempt to pluck a
+beautiful rose, which he finds hedged about with thorns in a garden full
+of marvels. In his attempts to reach the rose the lover is alternately
+aided and hindered by various allegorical personages, whose names
+suggest the part they play, such as Kindly Greeting and Modesty and
+Vanity and Pity. To the poet who first undertook the telling of this
+marvellous allegory, Guillaume de Lorris, woman is a superior being,
+almost an angel; and love is a divine thing. Love is the theme of his
+poem:
+
+        "Ce est li Romanz de la Rose
+        Ou l'Art d'Amours est toute enclose."
+
+(This is the Romance of the Rose, wherein is all the art of love.) And
+it is real love that he teaches; for the God of Love himself commands
+the lover: "It is my wish and my command that you centre all the
+devotion of your heart in one place." His lover is gentle and courteous;
+we are in an atmosphere not very different from that of the romances of
+chivalry.
+
+When Jean de Meung undertakes, some fifty years later, to complete the
+romance left unfinished by Guillaume, we find that woman is for him the
+incarnation of all vices; that love is a wicked thing, the root of all
+evil; that the art of deceiving women, not of loving them, is worth
+learning. Nay, the utmost libertinage is sanctioned; there is no such
+thing as fidelity in love, for it is contrary to the law of nature,
+which designed _toutes pour touz et touz pour toutes_--all women for all
+men, and all men for all women. Jean de Meung has absorbed all that the
+most cynical libertines of antiquity could teach him, and to that he has
+added his own rancor against woman. It is Ovid's _Art of Love and Remedy
+of Love_ revised for mediaeval use. Anything further from the gallantry
+of the romances of chivalry could hardly be found. And yet this cynical
+attitude was, as we have attempted to show, but an outgrowth of
+gallantry run mad; for in the beginning, gallantry, says Montesquieu,
+"is not love, but it is the delicate, the light, the perpetual pretence
+of loving."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MARIE DE BRABANT AND MAHAUT D'ARTOIS
+
+THE household of the kings of France, so lately under the wise control
+of Blanche de Castille or the pure influence of the good but weak
+Marguerite de Provence, was the scene of a court scandal which
+threatened serious consequences under the son of Saint Louis, that
+Philippe misnamed "le Hardi." The central figure in this unpleasant
+episode, Marie de Brabant, is otherwise of so little note that we shall
+not tell more of her than is necessary to the understanding of the
+little intrigue of which she was accused.
+
+Isabelle d'Aragon, the first wife of Philippe III., had died under
+tragic circumstances. She accompanied her husband and Saint Louis on the
+latter's second crusade, and returning with the body of the saintly
+king, was thrown from her horse while crossing a stream in Calabria, and
+died a few days later (January, 1271), giving birth to a child who did
+not long survive. In 1274, Philippe married Marie de Brabant, sister of
+Duke Jean de Brabant. The new queen was young, beautiful, and
+_excellente en sagesse_, increasing each day in favor with the king. The
+favorite of Philippe at that time was Pierre de la Brosse, who had begun
+life, so his enemies said, as barber-surgeon to Saint Louis, but who was
+really of more respectable origin. He had now arrived at such a pitch of
+fortune as to excite the envy of the nobles; since there was a clique
+against him, he was resolved to use every means to secure his power, for
+the loss of his power, as he well knew, would almost certainly involve
+the loss of his life.
+
+The queen, Marie, had probably manifested dislike of this favorite and
+perhaps sympathy with the attempts to overthrow his power. An
+accident--we do not hesitate to affirm that it was an accident--gave
+Pierre, now her enemy, a chance to ruin her. In 1276, Prince Louis,
+Philippe's eldest son by Isabelle, died suddenly, or at least under
+mysterious circumstances. The days of poisoning were not by any means
+past, and poisoning was at once suggested to account for the mysterious
+death. Pierre de la Brosse industriously circulated the rumor that the
+queen had committed the crime and was prepared to do the like by the
+three remaining children of Isabelle, in order that the crown might
+descend to her children. There was, of course, much evil talk in the
+court, as well as plots and counterplots between the friends of the
+queen and the friends of the favorite. Philippe was half distracted
+between his love for Marie and his suspicions of her, and the latter
+Pierre de la Brosse took pains to keep alive. Finally things came to
+such a pass that resort was had to the supernatural to satisfy the
+doubts of the king,--no unusual method of settling difficulties in the
+days when the belief in things occult was still rife.
+
+At the instance of one of the parties,--it is not absolutely certain
+which,--Philippe decided to refer the matter of the death of this son to
+the decision of a learned and devout nun, or Beguine, of Nivelle in
+Brabant, reputed to have the gift of second sight and mysterious
+knowledge of things past, present, and to be. It is not impossible that
+the oracle was tampered with by the enemies of Pierre de la Brosse; but,
+however that may be, she returned an answer that set Philippe's heart at
+rest. He was told to credit no ill against his good and loyal wife.
+Marie was thereby saved from a most dangerous position; but she could
+not fail to harbor resentment against the instigator of the attack upon
+her.
+
+Though, in spite of the intrigues of the queen and the nobles led by her
+brother, for two years Pierre de la Brosse continued in favor, his fate
+was preparing; and in the spring of 1278 it overtook him, when letters
+written by him or forged by his enemies were put into the hands of the
+king. There was treason in these letters, alleged to have been taken
+from Pierre's correspondence with Spain. He was arrested and confined in
+Vincennes, and a court of nobles, dominated by the Dukes of Burgundy and
+Brabant and the Count of Artois, held a sort of trial and condemned him.
+The nobles lost no time in disposing of the fallen favorite, whom they
+conducted at once to the scaffold, while the people of Paris, convinced
+of the fact that Pierre had been a good minister and that he was being
+unjustly condemned, indulged in serious riots. There was a popular
+belief, indeed, voiced by a Parisian chronicler, that Pierre was
+sacrificed to the hatred of the queen and the nobles: "Against the will
+of the King, as I believe, was he hanged.... He was destroyed more by
+envy than by guilt." The insinuations against the queen were no doubt
+one of the main causes of his downfall.
+
+History has never been able to determine whether Marie was really guilty
+of some attempt upon the life of the children of her husband's first
+wife. There is a very curious letter written by Pope Nicholas III. to
+Philippe and Marie that leads one to think that he at least credited the
+queen with some of the evil charged against her. After begging Philippe
+not to search deeper into the affair, since Pierre de la Brosse is dead,
+he fills his letter to Marie with rhetorical questions of a most
+disquieting nature: "What could possibly have provoked you to inflict a
+death so cruel upon an innocent child (Prince Louis) whose tender years
+could give no just grounds for hate?" If Marie was guiltless, it is hard
+to believe that the Pope thought her so, when one reads phrases so
+equivocal. She certainly had everything to gain for her own offspring by
+the death of Isabelle's children; but there is no proof that she even
+harbored evil designs, and the whole course of her rather quiet and
+obscure life gives the lie to the evil insinuations. She was gentle,
+pious according to the habit of the day, and had received a careful
+education which left her not without some appreciation of arts and
+letters, for we find her the patroness of a poet from her native
+Brabant, Adenet le Roi, called "king of minstrels." The real facts in
+the case, however, we can never know; and Marie hardly appears again in
+history, though she lived on in apparent wealth and fair renown until
+1321, when her death occurred.
+
+Before Marie de Brabant died many other queens had come and gone in
+Paris, during the reigns of Philippe le Bel and his sons, Louis le
+Hutin, and Philippe le Long. But not one of these is of sufficient fame
+or notoriety to merit extended comment; instead, we may centre our
+attention upon a typical _grande dame_ of the period, a woman who was a
+direct vassal of the crown and who played no small role in the affairs
+of her own domain, this is the Countess Mahaut d'Artois.
+
+Mahaut, or Matilda, was one of the high nobility, illustrious in her
+birth and in her relationship to persons of some note in history, being
+great-niece of Saint Louis, cousin of Philippe le Bel, grandmother of a
+Duke of Burgundy and of a Count of Flanders, and, greater still, mother
+of two unhappy Queens of France, the wives of Philippe V. and Charles
+IV. She lived an active and a useful life, and is a character not
+unpleasant to consider. From the days of her impetuous grandfather,
+Robert d'Artois, brother of Saint Louis, her family had been fond of the
+battlefield, on which many of them had died. Robert, first Count of
+Artois, was killed at Mansourah; Mahaut's father, Robert II., had fallen
+in the great massacre of the French nobility at the battle of Courtrai;
+and her brother, Philippe, had fallen in another battle with the sturdy
+burghers of Flanders, in 1298. The death of this brother left Mahaut the
+heiress of Artois, and she succeeded to her heritage when, as we noted
+above, her father was slain at Courtrai, in 1302.
+
+At that time Mahaut was already a matron and a great lady in the land;
+for, in 1285, she had married Otho, Count Palatine of Burgundy. Her
+husband was far older than she, being then forty-five, while Mahaut had
+scarcely reached womanhood; moreover, Otho had been a comrade of her
+father, and was as proud, as chivalrous, as lavish in his expenditures
+as any prince of his time. This habit of extravagance made Otho an easy
+victim for the rapacious money-lenders; and when he was in the hands of
+these Philistines the cautious King Philippe le Bel knew how to help him
+just enough to keep him a grateful and obedient vassal of the crown. As
+early as 1291 was born Mahaut's first child, a daughter named Jeanne,
+who was followed by a second daughter, Blanche (about 1295), and then by
+two sons, Robert, and John, the latter dying while still in infancy. The
+ruinous excesses of Count Otho had brought him to such a pass that, in
+1291, Philippe le Bel made a most advantageous bargain with him: the
+infant daughter Jeanne, it was agreed, was to marry the eldest son of
+the king and thus bring Burgundy under the power of the crown; but it
+was stipulated that, in the event of the birth of a son to Otho,
+Burgundy should revert to this son and Jeanne should marry the second
+son of the king. This, in fact, was what happened, for Otho had two
+sons. Again, in 1295, when the count was in the hands of the usurers,
+Philippe le Bel paid his debts, and granted him a pension and a
+continuance of this or part of it to his children, in return for which
+Burgundy was placed in the king's hands, together with the guardianship
+of the children until they should reach the age of seventeen.
+
+What the Countess Mahaut thought of these arrangements, so largely
+affecting the future of her children, we cannot tell, for we have little
+information in regard to her life previous to the death of her husband.
+This event occurred in the early part of 1303, when Otho, like so many
+others of Mahaut's family, was killed in battle with the Flemings; and
+it cannot be denied that his death was a gain rather than a misfortune
+for Mahaut and her children. As a widow she enjoyed the right to special
+protection from the crown, with which the relations of her family and of
+her husband had been most intimate and fortunate; and as a widow she was
+free to devote herself to the task of recouping the losses incurred
+through the bad management of her domains by Otho. As the feudal ruler
+of Artois and Bourgogne she would have much to occupy her time, even if
+her affairs had been in the best order and she had been left to manage
+them in peace; but this was not to be, for she had to contend for her
+rights during the greater part of the years that remained to her.
+
+Before we enter upon her career as Countess of Artois, let us conclude a
+part of the more intimate life of Mahaut, a part full of shame and
+sorrow for the mother. Her son, Robert, was the object of much
+solicitude on the part of Mahaut, who sought in every way to give him an
+education not only suited for the high station in life he would be
+called upon to occupy, but calculated to make him a useful and a happy
+man. As early as 1304, when he could have been no more than seven or
+eight years of age, Mahaut provided him with a separate establishment,
+or _hotel_, under the government of two worthy gentlemen, Thibaud de
+Mauregard and Jean de Vellefaux. There was provided a little comrade for
+Robert, Guillaume de Vienne, his playmate, who was treated with as much
+consideration and kindness as was Robert himself. Then there was a
+retinue of some seven or eight servants, and two knights, old servants
+of Mahaut's father, to assist in the military training of the young
+gentlemen; and there was also a certain Henri de Besson, the pedagogue
+charged with the education of Robert. The child, of course, was not left
+solely to these attendants by his mother, who passed a considerable part
+of the time with him. Games and fashionable amusements were not
+forbidden by the fond mother, and, as early as 1308, we find Robert
+losing his money in play at the court, and spending his gold on horses
+and tourneys like other young gentlemen of the day.
+
+In 1314 he was already able to wear knightly panoply of war, and in the
+following year he accompanied the royal army in an aimless expedition to
+Flanders, while his mother stayed at home and had prayers recited for
+the safety of her son. But that son, whom she loved so devotedly, and
+whom she was doing so much to please and amuse, did not live to manhood,
+for he died in the early part of September, 1317, before he had received
+the final dignity of knighthood. From all the Church dignitaries of
+Artois, from all the great relatives of Mahaut, came letters of
+condolence upon the death of the heir of Artois, which for two days was
+publicly proclaimed by servants of the countess through the streets of
+Paris, in which city generous alms were distributed to the poor; while
+pilgrims were despatched at once to Saint-James of Compostella, to
+Saint-Louis of Marseilles, and to other shrines, to intercede for the
+soul of the dead. A few weeks later Mahaut ordered a sculptor, Jean
+Pepin de Huy, to erect a tomb for the _tres noble homme monseigneur
+Robert d'Artois, jadis fiuz (fils) de ladite comtesse_. This tomb, of
+white stone, bears a recumbent figure of the young count, clothed in
+armor, with long, flowing hair about the handsome, beardless face; it is
+now preserved in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, having been moved from the
+church of the Cordeliers, where it originally rested over the grave of
+Mahaut's son.
+
+Long before the death of Robert, the Countess Mahaut's daughters had
+played their brief and disastrous parts in the French court. In January,
+1307, in accordance with the treaty agreed to by Count Otho in 1291, the
+eldest daughter, Jeanne, was married to Philippe de Poitiers, second son
+of King Philippe le Bel. The next year, Blanche, a great deal younger
+than Jeanne, but already renowned for her unusual beauty, married
+Charles le Bel, Count de la Marche, the youngest of the three sons of
+Philippe le Bel, Louis le Hutin, the eldest, having married Marguerite,
+sister of Hugues de Bourgogne. After their marriage to the princes of
+France, we hear little more of Jeanne and Blanche in the accounts of
+their mother, though both were guests at her mansion rather frequently,
+and presents of various sorts were exchanged between mother and
+daughters, until in 1314 came the great catastrophe.
+
+For some time there had been scandalous rumors at the court about the
+conduct of the three young princesses, and in the spring of 1314 the
+evil report received such confirmation that the old king, Philippe le
+Bel, gave the order to arrest them on charges of having been openly and
+scandalously unfaithful to their marriage vows with two young knights of
+their suite. Marguerite and Blanche were confined in rigid imprisonment
+at the famous Chateau Gaillard, built by Richard of the Lion Heart. They
+were stripped of all the glory of fine attire, and their heads were
+shaved. Meanwhile, their accomplices in adultery, Philippe and Gautier
+d'Aulnai, two Norman knights, were put to the torture, and confessed
+that during three years they had sinned many times with the princesses.
+The right of trial by battle, for which the knights first asked, had
+been sternly denied them; there was but the rack, and after that a
+shameful death for those who had dared to bring shame upon the royal
+family. With the ingenuity of the Middle Ages in devising exquisite
+torments, the two young men were publicly flayed alive, cruelly
+mutilated, and tortured as long as life could be kept in their miserable
+bodies. There were other accomplices in the disgrace of the princesses;
+these, too, when they were not of rank sufficiently high to protect
+them, were tortured, sewn up in sacks, and cast into the Seine. An
+unfortunate Dominican monk, accused of having debauched the princesses
+by compounding love philtres and otherwise exercising the black art, was
+delivered over into the hands of the Inquisition; he was never heard of
+afterward.
+
+The confessions of their lovers left no doubt as to the guilt of Blanche
+and Marguerite. The former, still but a girl, had been led into her evil
+ways by Marguerite, and pitifully owned her sin, pleading for
+forgiveness in accents of such sincere repentance that all who heard her
+were moved. But her husband was inexorable; and she remained in prison
+until 1322, when Charles, having become king, obtained a dissolution of
+the marriage on the ground that Mahaut had been his godmother and that
+this established a spiritual relationship for which he had forgotten to
+ask a dispensation when he married Blanche. Then Charles married Marie
+de Luxembourg, and his unhappy divorced wife was compelled to retire to
+a nunnery.
+
+It was said that in her prison of Chateau Gaillard she had suffered
+violence from her jailer; it is more charitable to suppose that this is
+so than to assume, as some do, that she was so depraved in morals as
+voluntarily to abandon herself to debauchery; and one must always
+remember that it was to the interest of the court party to represent her
+in colors as dark as possible. The belief in her guilt, nevertheless,
+cannot be avoided; and even her mother gives silent proof of her belief
+in it, for after the disgrace of her daughter, that daughter's name
+appears no more in the accounts of Mahaut's household. Blanche retired
+to the convent of Maubuisson, where she took the veil in 1325, and died
+in the next year. Under "a large white stone, much carved and decorated
+with roses, without any inscription, and bearing a figure representing a
+nun," lay the body of the unhappy Blanche, once Queen of France in
+right.
+
+Her companion in debauchery, Marguerite de Bourgogne, met a fate more
+suddenly tragic, though surely not more pathetic. Her marriage with
+Louis le Hutin could have been dissolved, of course, on the score of
+adultery; but Louis preferred less public methods. Having become king,
+on the death of his father, not many months after Marguerite's disgrace,
+he desired to find another wife; so Marguerite was put to death in the
+Chateau Gaillard, being smothered, it is said, between two mattresses.
+
+The third of the daughters-in-law of Philippe le Bel, the Countess
+Jeanne de Poitiers, was more fortunate than her sister and Marguerite.
+When the three had been arrested she was separated from the other two
+and sent to Dourdan. Her character seems to have been better formed than
+that of Blanche, and she had not indulged in the excesses proved against
+Blanche and Marguerite. Mahaut was from the first firmly convinced of
+her innocence, and sent frequent messages of consolation and sympathy to
+her during her confinement in Dourdan. Although she had been aware of
+the evil practices of her sister and her sister-in-law, it could hardly
+be held an unpardonable crime for her to have refrained from
+talebearing. In one of the rhymed chronicles, which gives a graphic
+account of this tragedy, Jeanne is represented as confessing her small
+share in the wrong and pleading for mercy before Philippe le Bel: "Sire,
+for God's sake hear me! Who is it that accuses me? I say I am a good
+woman, without guilt, without sin or shame." She demanded an
+investigation, and the king granted her request. While she was confined
+a strict inquiry was held into her conduct, and the result was that, at
+Christmastide, 1314, she was adjudged innocent, and came back to her
+husband, "whereof there was great joy throughout France." She was to
+become Queen of France not long afterward, and then to be widowed; but
+during the rest of her life there was no blot on her good name, and no
+interruption in the affectionate relations existing between herself and
+her mother. As Countess of Poitiers, as Queen of France, and as dowager
+Queen and Duchess of Burgundy, she visited Mahaut frequently,
+accompanied her in journeys, and exchanged gifts with her.
+
+The scene of the orgies indulged in by Blanche de la Marche and
+Marguerite de Bourgogne was long pointed out in Paris and became an
+object of peculiar horror--one of those places of evil association
+which, without our knowing why, always arouse a feeling of repulsion and
+of dread. It was in the dark old Tour de Nesle, on the bank of the Seine
+opposite the Louvre, that, said the Parisian horror-mongers, the wicked
+queens had held high revel. The legend was not only enduring, but, like
+most legends, endowed with the faculty of gathering new matter as the
+years went by. Francois Villon, that great repository of the quaint
+beliefs of the people of the purlieus of the Sorbonne, tells of the
+great queen "who had Jean Buridan cast in the Seine in a sack" from the
+high walls of the Tour de Nesle. Brantome, in his _Dames galantes_,
+records the same popular story of a queen "who dwelt in the Hotel de
+Nesle, at Paris, and lay in wait for passers-by; and those who pleased
+and suited her best, whatever class of people they might be, she had
+them summoned and made them come to her by night; and after she had had
+her pleasure of them she had them cast into the water from the top of
+the high tower, and had them drowned." Other historians are even more
+definite in their statements--which, nevertheless, are
+unfounded,--naming the queen who is said to have been the Parisian
+Messalina and to have given a tragic end to the celebrated legist, Jean
+Buridan; she was, they say, Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel.
+
+Jeanne, who died in 1307, was a violent and savage woman, but there is
+no proof that she was at all immoral. She it was who manifested such
+savage virulence against the Flemish women during the revolt of 1302:
+"When you kill these Flemish boars," she said to the soldiers, "do not
+spare the sows; them I would have spitted;" and she it was who did her
+best to ruin the minister Guichard, who had incurred her enmity by
+saving an unfortunate creditor whom she was resolved to destroy. She
+pursued Guichard with such relentless fury, indeed, that he had resort
+to the black art, seeking at first to win back the queen's favor by his
+enchantments, then seeking to compass her death by the favorite method
+of constructing a waxen image, representing his enemy, and causing it to
+melt slowly away, in the belief that she would waste as the image
+wasted. But Jeanne did not die of witchcraft, though Guichard was
+imprisoned and long persecuted as a sorcerer. We have given these few
+facts about her to show that she was a person of ill repute, which will
+partly account for the substitution of her name for the names of
+Marguerite and Blanche in the tales of the Tour de Nesle.
+
+Because of the misfortunes which overtook her daughters, Countess Mahaut
+was compelled to be very circumspect in her own conduct. She had been an
+indulgent and affectionate mother to both; but her own political
+situation was at this time top precarious to admit of her attempting to
+defend them with a high hand. After the death of her father, in 1302,
+Mahaut and her husband had been invested with the county of Artois, and
+she had continued to govern it unmolested after Otho's death until 1307,
+when we first hear rumors of a claim affecting the validity of her
+title. Mahaut had inherited the county as being nearest of kin to Robert
+II., the Salic law not applying under the customs of Artois. At the time
+there was living a son of Mahaut's brother, Philippe; and this young
+Robert de Beaumont, calling himself Robert d'Artois, was the person who,
+instigated by his mother, now attacked Mahaut's title, appealing for
+judgment to the king and the court of peers. Robert demanded the
+recognition of his rights to the countship of Artois, or, failing that,
+to an indemnity of considerable amount. This latter had been already
+provided for by a convention between his grand-fathers at the time of
+the marriage of Philippe d'Artois and Blanche de Bretagne, and Robert
+was perfectly justified in demanding its payment. When the cause was
+tried before Philippe le Bel, October, 1309, he rendered fair judgment,
+confirming Mahaut in the possession of Artois and granting certain lands
+and a large sum of money to Robert.
+
+But mediaeval politics were very uncertain; what one king did or said
+might well be reversed by his successor; and so the death of Philippe le
+Bel (1314) was the signal for a renewed attempt to dispossess Mahaut and
+her children. At this time there was much disquiet over all the kingdom,
+and Mahaut had the dreadful shame of her daughter to harass her; it
+seemed, therefore, a peculiarly opportune time to begin the attack upon
+her. Robert addressed a most insolent letter to his aunt: _A tres haute
+et tres noble dame, Mahaut d'Artoys, comtesse de Bourgogne, Robert
+d'Artoys, chevalier_. But we will translate: "Since you have wrongfully
+denied me my rights to the countship of Artois, at which I have been and
+still am greatly troubled, and which I neither can nor will longer
+suffer, therefore I notify you that I shall take counsel to recover mine
+own as soon as may be." Not content with this formal claim, which he
+pushed before the king, Robert resorted to most unworthy weapons in his
+contest with Mahaut, stirring up the vassals and communes of Artois,
+inciting them to acts of violence against her and her children, and
+circulating rumors most dangerous in an age when people were but too
+ready to credit accusations of the sort that Mahaut had employed sorcery
+against her son-in-law, Philippe le Long, and had poisoned the King,
+Louis X.
+
+We have had occasion to mention now and again this subject of
+witchcraft; it may be permissible, therefore, to give some few details
+brought out in the investigation, in 1317, of the charges of evil
+practices brought against Mahaut d' Artois. The belief in witchcraft was
+almost a cardinal article of faith throughout many centuries, even among
+the educated classes, and one might say that the cynical author of the
+second part of the _Roman de la Rose_, Jean de Meung, is almost a unique
+exception in his scepticism regarding the power of sorcery. Many a
+miserable old woman had suffered horrible tortures at the hands of
+justice or had been hounded to her death by superstitious neighbors who
+credited her with causing diseases of men and cattle, dearth, drouth,
+storms, or any other untoward misfortunes; and many a monk, devoting
+himself to rational study of the phenomena of nature, to chemistry,
+astronomy, medicine, or any other science, had incurred suspicion of
+damnable traffic with the devil, like the Guichard mentioned above, and
+like Gerbert himself, who lived to become Pope. The Church authorized
+the belief in evil spirits and provided forms of exorcism to rid the
+land, the cattle, the house, the body, of the demons that possessed
+them; while the mediaeval books of medicine show us that that science
+relied largely upon charms, peculiar times and seasons, and
+incantations, for the compounding of the drugs that were to effect
+cures. The witch and her hellish brews maintained a perfect reign of
+terror over the ignorant and the superstitious.
+
+Instigated doubtless by Robert d'Artois or his emissaries, a certain
+Isabelle de Ferieves, reputed a witch in her own country of Hesdin,
+testified that Mahaut d'Artois had come to her and asked her to compound
+a sort of philtre or potion to restore the love of Count Philippe de
+Poitiers for her daughter Jeanne, then imprisoned at Dourdan under the
+charge of adultery. Isabelle required Mahaut to procure for her and
+deliver to her, in secret, some blood from Jeanne's right arm, which she
+mingled with three herbs, vervain, liver-wort, and daisy, pronouncing
+over the mixture a mystic incantation. Placing it then upon a clean new
+brick, she burned it by means of a fire fed with oak wood, and pounded
+up the paste so produced into a powder, which was to be administered to
+Philippe in his food or drink or cast upon his right side. For this
+Isabelle received a substantial price, seventy _livres parisis_, and was
+given a similar order for a philtre to recover the affections of the
+Count de la Marche for his wife Blanche. Moreover, she asserted that
+Mahaut, well pleased with the efficacy of these decoctions, asked for a
+poison to envenom arrows, which she pretended that she desired to use
+upon nothing more than the deer of her forests. The enchantress set to
+work again, with an adder's tail and spine and a toad dried in the open
+air, which she pounded up into a powder and mingled with wheat flour and
+incense. The sorceress was painfully lacking in imagination, else we
+should have had something to rival:
+
+        "Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
+        Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
+        Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
+        Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
+        For a charm of powerful trouble,
+        Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
+
+But perhaps the report of unsympathetic historians and lawyers has been
+unjust to her, and has toned down the horrors of her "charm of powerful
+trouble," which she alleged the Countess Mahaut gave to Louis X.,
+thereby procuring his death and the accession of her son-in-law,
+Philippe V.
+
+The king conducted a serious and searching investigation, to which
+Mahaut declared herself more than ready to submit, provided that the
+court were properly constituted and that her cause in the matter of the
+succession in Artois be in no wise prejudiced. Witnesses on both sides
+were examined, including the widow of the late King Louis X. and the
+officers of his household, and on October 9, 1317, a solemn verdict of
+acquittal resulted for Mahaut. There need be no doubt that the
+accusations against her had been entirely groundless, merely trumped up
+in the hope of prejudicing her cause in the eyes of the court. It was
+only a few months later that Philippe V., after a careful and impartial
+reexamination of the allegations on both sides, gave judgment in
+parliament confirming the finding of his father and establishing
+Mahaut's right to Artois, and ordering that "the said parties (Mahaut
+and Robert) should desist from all hate and all felonious acts,... and
+that the said Robert should love the said Countess as his dear aunt, and
+the said Countess the said Robert as her dear nephew" which both swore
+to do.
+
+While Mahaut was forced to contend in the courts for her authority over
+Artois, the rebellion of the nobles on the death of Philippe le Bel had
+not been without serious results in Artois, where she had found it no
+easy task to maintain any sort of hold upon her vassals. Her chief
+counsellor, and a faithful servitor he proved, was Thierry d'Hirecon,
+whom the vassals of Artois hated as a parvenu foreigner he was from the
+Bourbonnais. In 1314 her vassals began complaining to Mahaut of abuses
+in the government; but they soon passed from peaceful and legitimate
+remonstrance to active outrages upon the servants and the property of
+their countess. In all this Robert d'Artois was no doubt the hidden
+instigator. One of Mahaut's officers, Cornillot, bailli of Hesdin, who
+had incurred the enmity of the Sire de Crequi by interfering with his
+hunting over field and forest without regard for the rights of others,
+was set upon by a mob of villains who hanged him to a tree; when the
+weight of his body broke the limb and brought the poor wretch to the
+ground, they buried him in the earth up to his neck, cut off his head,
+and carried it as a trophy to the Sire de Crequi. Mahaut despatched her
+son with a considerable force to arrest two of the rebel vassals in the
+act of going to war; they were taken to prison, but unwisely released by
+the intervention of the king, and on the very steps of the prison
+proclaimed their intention of going over to Mahaut's enemy, Robert. Some
+of the nobles came upon the young count and his sister, Jeanne, in a
+country house, insulted them grossly, and even threw mud in the face of
+the defenceless Jeanne and her brother, who had with them but three
+knights. Jeanne fled to Hesdin, where Mahaut was at the time, and on the
+road her carriage was surrounded by a mob of knights, who terrified her
+by their insults and their threats. At last both she and Mahaut were
+forced to abandon Artois till quieter days should come, leaving the
+officers and armies of the king to restore order, a task not completed
+until July, 1319.
+
+The rebels committed so many outrages, and the public peace was so
+frequently disturbed by their quarrels, that the better element was
+ready to welcome Mahaut as a deliverer when she came back, fortified by
+the recent decree of the king in her favor. At Arras a sort of triumphal
+procession was arranged to welcome her, and "she entered seated upon a
+chariot, preceded by thirteen banners, accompanied by the Constable of
+France, by Thierry d'Hirecon,--who, like his mistress, had been driven
+to flight,--and, more wonderful still, by many bold knights who had long
+sworn to destroy her." The next day the countess gave a splendid
+banquet, at which were present "the Constable, all the knights, the
+burgesses and notables (of Arras), and besides many ladies." The towns
+in particular were glad to have their countess once more in power;
+indeed, all the towns except Arras had remained faithful to her,
+resisting the enticing proposals of Robert d'Artois and the rebel
+nobility, for well the burgesses knew that only a strong hand could
+protect them and their goods from the rapacity of nobles who were always
+in want of money and always ready to take the first that came to hand.
+To two of the emissaries of the rebels the citizens of Saint-Omer gave
+answer that their countess "was a good guardian of their law and their
+privileges, and if she were not they should make complaint to none but
+the King;" while they told the emissaries of Robert d'Artois, who dared
+not affirm that the king had decided in favor of their patron, "then we
+are not makers of any Count of Artois."
+
+Though severe in her administration of justice and strict in the
+maintenance of order within her dominions, Mahaut appears to have been
+just, even kind, and hence able to command the respect of her subjects.
+With the citizens of Arras she exchanges courteous greetings and gifts;
+cloths, wine, fish, come to her from the townspeople; and she invites to
+her table the burgesses and their wives. When she is ill, they send to
+inquire solicitously after her health, and she replies: "Mahaut,
+Countess d'Artois, etc.... to our beloved and faithful _echevin_ and
+twenty-four burgesses of Arras, greeting and love. We are much pleased,
+and heartily do we thank you for that you sent to inquire concerning our
+health.... Therefore we wish you to know that on the day when this
+letter was written we were in good bodily health, thanks be to God....
+Give greeting in our name to all our good subjects, and be assured that
+as soon as we shall be able we will journey into that part of the
+country. Our Lord have you in His care. Given at Bracon, the thirteenth
+day of August." What a quaint and yet dignified and kindly letter is
+this, showing us at once the great feudal lady and the woman really
+grateful for kindly sympathy.
+
+Another episode, immediately preceding her triumphant reentry into
+Artois, reveals again the feminine nature, and we are rather surprised
+to find that this energetic, courageous Mahaut can be, at need, such a
+very woman. The royal troops had restored order in Artois, and the
+vassals of Mahaut, leagued against her authority, had been reduced to
+submission and had consented to a peaceful settlement of their alleged
+grievances and to the return of their lawful countess. On July 3, 1319,
+the royal commissioners came to her mansion in Paris to read her the
+treaty, in the presence of her counsellors. She protested that the
+treaty violated her privileges, and declared she would not listen to the
+reading of an agreement in which she could not alter a word. Tears
+flowed, and the excited lady now would, now would not, listen to the
+reading; and that, too, when she admitted that she, like the nobles of
+the league, had sworn to submit their differences to the arbitration of
+the king, and that she would keep her oath! Summoning her notary to draw
+up a formal act of protest,--"all that she might say or swear would be
+said or sworn against her will and her conscience, and in the fear of
+losing her county of Artois,"--she hurried to Longchamp, into the
+presence of the king. Philippe assured her that all had been done in
+good faith to safeguard her rights, and that it was merely for form's
+sake that he would require her to swear to observe the treaty. Presto!
+the doubts and the tears disappear: "I swear it!" And the countess went
+out in apparent peace of mind. But now she was met by two of her
+relatives, her nephew and her cousin, who pointed out to her that her
+oath was insufficient, because she had not specified exactly what it was
+that she swore; an oath so vague might have serious consequences, and so
+they implored her to return to the presence. More tears, more angry
+refusals to swear at all, and finally the countess once more yielded and
+went before the king. The chancellor held out the Bible for her to swear
+that she would observe the stipulations of the treaty; Mahaut turned
+toward the king: "Sire, do you wish me to take this oath?" "I advise you
+to do so." "Sire, I will swear, provided you guard me against all
+deception." "So help me God, it shall surely be done." "Then, I swear,
+as you have said," and once more Mahaut went out.
+
+One can forgive her exasperation at finding that the persistent
+relatives were still not satisfied; poor woman, she felt that all she
+possessed and all her children possessed was somehow at stake, and she
+helplessly ignorant, like too many other women, of the technical points
+of the law. Again, feeling that her counsellors were probably in the
+right in protesting against the conditional oath she had taken, Mahaut
+went into the royal presence. The Sire de Noiers, marshal of France,
+protested that everyone was acting in good faith by her, and that the
+king merely wished her to take the oath without equivocation or
+reservation: "Sire de Noiers, I am here, as you can see, without
+counsel; some of the king's councillors have so intimidated mine that
+they dared not appear before you; God alone inspired me to say what I
+did say; have I not several times sworn as my lord commanded? What is
+there so amazing in the king's promising to succor me, a widow, in case
+of deception? Does he not owe this same protection to every widow in his
+kingdom? What I have sworn should suffice." Another councillor protested
+that her conditional oath was an insult to the King's councillors; there
+was crimination and recrimination, till at length the badgered countess,
+sighing deeply, appealed to Philippe: "Ah! dear Sire, have pity upon me,
+a poor widow driven from her heritage, and here without counsel! You see
+how your people besiege me, one barking on my right, another at my left,
+till I know not what to answer, in the great trouble of my mind. For
+God's sake, give me time to deliberate upon this matter.... I am willing
+to take any oath you wish." Then, when the chancellor again held out his
+Bible and required her to swear fearlessly and without conditions, she
+broke forth in tears: "Many times have I sworn already! I swear again, I
+swear, I swear, may evil come upon my body if I swear not truly!" And
+she rushed out and hurriedly left for Paris, in spite of all
+remonstrances. It was not till the next day that, her advisers succeeded
+in persuading her to take the oath in proper form, as the king wished it
+taken.
+
+One may think that this quibbling, this Jesuitical swearing with a
+mental reservation to be bound only so far as seemed good to herself,
+was unworthy of Mahaut; it was, as a matter of fact, but the poor
+defence of the weak in an age when trickery was but too common. Mahaut
+knew that, although the king was her son-in-law, policy might have won
+him to the side of her nephew, the claimant of her county. Even if
+Philippe were above a miserable deception of the kind, there was no
+telling to what tricks the crafty lawyers, perhaps in the pay of Robert
+d'Artois, might have recourse. She could not conquer chicanery by force,
+she could not meet it with chicanery, hence her nervousness and her
+hesitation and suspicion.
+
+When the countess felt herself strong in her own right and sure of
+proper support from her servants, she was by no means the tearful and
+vacillating woman whom we have seen in the preceding page or two. The
+officers of her government in the various bailiwicks of Artois were
+usually well chosen and reliable. Appointed and paid by the countess and
+holding office at her pleasure, these baillis, recruited from the ranks
+of the petty nobility and the bourgeoisie, had every incentive to
+honesty and faithful service. They were at once administrators,
+justices, and financial agents, and in the latter capacity had to make
+reports, at Candlemas, at Ascension, and at All Saints, to the chief
+financial officer, the receiver-general, who in turn submitted his
+accounts to Mahaut. She was not infrequently in dire need of money, for
+the expenses of her household were always large, and she was burdened by
+the debts left by Otho, but these she did at last manage to pay.
+
+With the aid of her officers, upon whom she kept a close watch, Mahaut
+was prompt enough to repress any unruly vassal who went beyond the
+limits of law. Sometimes force was necessary, as when the Sire d'Oisy
+overran and ravaged the lands of certain monasteries under Mahaut's
+protection and slew the peaceful inhabitants. Summoned by the bailli to
+appear before her court, the sire at first refused to admit the bailli,
+then did admit him and kept him a prisoner. "Not a stone of his chateau
+shall be left standing," declared Mahaut, and she despatched a little
+army that soon brought the Sire d'Oisy to reason. The punishments
+inflicted upon recalcitrant vassals were sometimes most severe and
+sometimes fantastic. The seigneur himself is sometimes put to death when
+his crimes have been too much for the patience of the countess and her
+people; or he is expelled and deprived of his fief; or he is heavily
+fined and ordered to perform a penitential pilgrimage. It is thus that
+Jean de Gouves is condemned, in 1323, to undertake a pilgrimage to the
+shrine of Saint-Louis of Marseilles, to the tomb of the Apostles in
+Rome, and to two other Italian shrines; while, to avoid possibility of
+deception on the part of this pious pilgrim, he is required to bring
+back a certificate from each of the places visited.
+
+If the punishments inflicted on rebellious vassals were severe, what
+epithet shall we reserve for the punishments of the criminal code? The
+rack and the stake are not unheard of during the reign of Mahaut, and
+these are the milder forms of punishment: counterfeiters boiled in oil,
+women guilty of theft or of marital infidelity buried alive, miserable
+lepers put to the torture,--these are but a few of the ingenious and
+barbarous punishments of which we find record. But it is to be noted
+that Mahaut was not wantonly cruel or vindictive; the forms of execution
+we have mentioned were the established practice of the day, with which
+no one dreamed of interfering; so far from being heartless, Mahaut
+reduced the severity of the fines and penalties in some cases and
+provided for the widows and orphans of some who were sent to the
+gallows, while she was always endeavoring to restrain the grasping
+proclivities of her tax-gatherers and holding investigations whenever
+complaint of injustice reached her ears.
+
+With the minor matters of her household economy we need not deal, since
+enough has been said of the manner of life of a mediaeval lady of rank.
+Suffice it to say that the _hotel_ of the Countess of Artois was famous
+for its hospitality and that many of the great ones of the earth sat
+down to her table. With the fashionable world, the world of the court,
+Mahaut maintained very close relations, since she was, in one way or
+another, related to most of the royal family and to the great nobles.
+Whenever there was a marriage in these circles, there came a rich
+present from "Madame la Comtesse d'Artois"; sometimes, as in the case of
+the daughter of her minister, Thierry d'Hirecon, it was practically a
+whole trousseau: "One scarlet robe, another of deep green cloth, both
+lined and bordered with fine furs; a mantle and a _cotte_ of cloth of
+gold, the former lined with fur; a robe of Irish woollen; a coverlet of
+green cloth; a counterpane of _cendal_ (meaning usually a heavy and
+strong stuff, but sometimes silk); four green carpets and fifty ells of
+linens for sheets." Truly a present of which any bride might be proud,
+though not so expensive, it appears, as the _nef_ (an ornament for the
+table, shaped like a ship, and used to hold spices, extra spoons, etc.),
+and costing one hundred and fifty pounds, given to "our niece, Marie
+d'Artois, on the occasion of her marriage to Jean de Flandre, comte de
+Namur." Then, if her sovereign requires her presence at court, Mahaut
+equips herself and all her suite, gives presents to friends and
+dependents, and goes up, it may be, to Rheims, as when Philippe le Long
+is to be crowned if he can persuade enough of the Peers of France to
+attend, and where few do attend, so that our Countess Mahaut, a Peer of
+France, has the privilege of holding the royal crown over the head of
+her son-in-law. Or mayhap the countess, wishing to keep friends with the
+great, sends a mess of fine herrings to the powerful favorite,
+Enguerrand de Marigny, or to her own daughter, Queen Jeanne; or a
+magnificent jewel of enamelled silver, adorned with rubies and
+sculptured to represent a little king and queen, and costing one hundred
+and thirty _livres parisis_, to be delivered to the real king and queen;
+or a little statuette in enamelled silver, sustaining a shrine, to be
+presented to the widow of Philippe le Hardi, Marie de Brabant, "de par
+la comtesse d'Artois et de Bourgogne."
+
+Mahaut spent in this way a considerable amount, besides purchasing for
+herself and her children various _objets d'art_, statuettes, paintings,
+illuminated missals and other books, handsome cups and the like for her
+table, and jewels and rich clothing in profusion. She was evidently a
+lady of taste, but also of rather extravagant habits and fond of
+travelling; for she had carriages or vehicles of some sort in plenty,
+and travelled on horseback when the state of the roads would not permit
+the use either of carriage or litter. With her retinue of servants and
+her carts loaded with baggage and provisions, the countess could yet
+make the trip from Arras to Paris in three or four days.
+
+But the time was drawing nigh when all her journeyings would be at an
+end; and as she neared the end of her earthly pilgrimage fresh troubles
+came to disturb her in the lawful enjoyment of her heritage. After the
+last decree rendered by Philippe V., Mahaut and her nephew were
+reconciled and lived on good terms--at least so one would fancy from the
+exchange of courtesies and hospitality which took place in the years
+ensuing. But Robert was evidently only biding his time; and now an
+accident supervened to revive his hopes of better fortune in a new
+hearing before the royal court. Of course, there was a woman in this
+case, one who does not play a very creditable part. In 1328, Thierry
+d'Hirecon had been elected to the episcopal see of Arras, but had died
+in a few months after his election. After his death, which was a serious
+loss to Mahaut, the episcopal palace was cleansed, by her orders, of the
+presence of Thierry's infamous concubine, Jeanne de Divion, who had fled
+to the arms of the unscrupulous old churchman from the indignant
+vengeance of an outraged husband. Jeanne de Divion, finding herself
+driven forth by Mahaut, and forgotten in the will of Thierry, from whose
+senile infatuation she had hoped great things, resolved to be avenged on
+Mahaut. She fled from Arras to the service of the ambitious and
+unscrupulous Jeanne de Valois, sister of Philippe VI., and wife of
+Robert d'Artois.
+
+Jeanne de Divion was full of vague tales of the valuable papers
+belonging to the county of Artois which she had seen in the possession
+of Thierry, and the two women soon saw that some capital could be made
+for the claims of Robert d'Artois. Robert himself seems to have been
+reluctant, at first, to have any dealings with the degraded paramour of
+Thierry d'Hirecon; in place of vague asseverations of what she had seen
+among the papers of Thierry he demanded the documents themselves, if
+there were any. It is probable that at the time there were no documents;
+but Jeanne de Divion was resourceful and not too nice in regard to
+matters of conscience. Going to Arras to search among the papers of
+Thierry, she returned with an alleged treaty negotiated in 1281 between
+the paternal and maternal grand-fathers of Robert, under the terms of
+which the customs of Artois were set aside and the succession guaranteed
+to Philippe d'Artois's children, of whom Robert was the representative.
+
+Robert's scruples were laid at rest when this very questionable
+document, of which nobody had ever heard a word, was put into his hands.
+He wrote to his brother-in-law, now King of France, to demand a new
+investigation of the claims to Artois. Meanwhile, the Countess Mahaut
+set about collecting testimony in rebuttal, aiming especially to show
+the falsity of the alleged document containing the treaty. She arrested
+two servants of Jeanne de Divion, who testified, in the presence of
+several witnesses and of a notary who took down the depositions, that
+the treaty in question had been written by one Jacques Rondelet, clerk
+of Arras, at the dictation of Jeanne de Divion, on her recent visit to
+Arras. Moreover, the countess had the wisdom to get these witnesses to
+testify that they had not been coerced by her but testified of their own
+free will and accord. Then she interrogated Jacques Rondelet, who
+confirmed all that the servants had said, adding that he had written at
+dictation, and under oath of secrecy, from a document which Jeanne de
+Divion would not let him see.
+
+The proofs of the forgery, one would think, were sufficient before the
+cause came to trial; yet, after a statement of the principal allegations
+on both sides, the king adjourned the hearing to another day. But that
+day was not to dawn for Mahaut. On November 23, 1329, the countess was
+at Poissy, where she dined with the king, going on to the convent of
+Maubuisson to pass the night, and thence to Paris next day. Here she
+fell suddenly ill; and her own physician, Thomas le Miesier, was sent
+for in all haste from Arras. The crude or dangerous remedies of the
+medicine of the day were powerless to relieve Mahaut; phlebotomy and
+purgatives probably served but to exhaust her already depleted strength,
+and the physicians recognized that her end was at hand. Couriers rode in
+haste from the Hotel d'Artois in Paris to Queen Jeanne, to the Duke of
+Burgundy, to the Count of Flanders, on the 26th, and as many as three to
+the king next day, bearing news of the great countess's peril. Jeanne
+came to her mother with all speed, but the end had come before she could
+reach Paris; the good Countess of Artois breathed her last on November
+27th.
+
+She who had expended considerable sums in the pomp of funerals, tombs,
+and effigies for others was buried very simply, at her own request, in
+the Abbey of Maubuisson, where her grave was marked at first by a plain,
+flat copper plate, hardly raised above the level of the pavement. In
+accordance with a custom not unusual in her day, the body was opened and
+the heart taken to the Franciscan Church in Paris, where it was
+interred, as she had directed, _juxta sepulturam Roberti carissimi filii
+mei_--"beside the grave of my very dear son Robert."
+
+Judging from the features of a statue representing Mahaut, which was
+formerly in a church in Arras and was copied in miniature by an artist
+of the seventeenth century, the countess was a woman of large and
+commanding figure, with features rather masculine and strongly marked in
+their regularity. If one may say so, the sculptor has drawn for us
+Mahaut's character as well as her features; she was of the masculine
+type, strong and energetic rather than lovable. For a woman who would
+hold her own in those days, the qualities she possessed were, in fact,
+essential; to rule Artois in the fourteenth century there was need of an
+amazon rather than of a lovely, fragile, soft-hearted daughter of love.
+We do not mean that Mahaut was cold, heartless, merely a politician; she
+was far better both in morals and in kindness of heart than the average
+lady of her time. She was generous, and yet not a hopeless spendthrift;
+she was pious and devoted to the glorious memory of her great-uncle
+Saint Louis, whom she must have seen when a child, and yet not a narrow
+bigot, displaying her religious feeling rather in acts of charity than
+in acts of pure devotion. No niche awaits her among the heroines of
+France, for she is a figure neither heroic nor romantic; but she lived
+her life, the full, healthy, and useful life of a stirring and good lady
+of the manor in the fourteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+JEANNE DE MONTFORT
+
+WE are now coming to a period in the history of France when woman,
+though she may not play a part either more prominent or more honorable,
+will be a centre of universal interest to the subjects of France and of
+England. Much ink and much fluid of a brighter hue and a more precious
+quality will be shed in the war between the lawyers and the soldiers of
+France on the one hand, and those of England on the other; and all to
+establish the legal status of woman in the eyes of the French law. The
+great question is: Shall the succession to the crown of France be
+governed by the laws and customs prevailing in many other countries and
+in a large part of France itself, whereby women are entitled to inherit
+equally with men; or shall the ancient law of the Salian Franks apply,
+the _Loi Salique_, "let no part of the Salian land pass into the hands
+of a woman"? Since the question has been argued by many a scholiast and
+many a historian and settled for all time by the arms of Frenchmen
+defending their right to rule France as seemed best to them, we shall
+give but small attention to the niceties of the legal argument; but an
+exposition of the principal facts seems essential.
+
+The argument of the French lawyers was that the Salian land was now
+represented by domains of the crown; and since the protection of the
+Salian land necessitated the guardianship of a man, _a fortiori_ must
+the guarding of the kingdom demand the power of the sword rather than
+the gentler distaff. Feeling that we owe some apology for clothing in
+figurative language the simple statement that no woman could wear the
+crown of France, none more apt can we find than a literal transcription
+of one of the arguments used by the French lawyers, which suggested the
+unfortunate distaff. It ran thus: In the Gospel of Saint Matthew (6: 28)
+one reads: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
+not, neither do they spin: And yet 'I say unto you, That even Solomon in
+all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Now France was the
+kingdom of the lily, witness the _fleur-de-lis_ upon the royal arms;
+lilies, according to Scripture, are gloriously arrayed, though they
+cannot spin: _ergo_, the kingdom of the lily should never pass to the
+distaff.
+
+There were of course arguments of more weight than this, which we have
+ventured to present merely for the sake of its quaintness,
+characteristic as it is of the day when tireless pedants were wont to
+debate in this fashion all things in heaven and on earth. Closer study
+of the Salic law itself, nevertheless, was not reassuring to the
+adherents of France; for there they found one of the formulas of Marculf
+proving that, from the days of the Merovingian kings, the _terre
+salique_, the allodial land, could be inherited by a woman. This ancient
+act reads: "To my dear daughter: It is among us a custom ancient but
+impious that sisters shall not share with their brothers in the heritage
+of the paternal land. I have considered that you all came to me alike
+from God, that you should therefore find an equal share of love in me,
+and, after my death, enjoy equally the heritage of my worldly goods. For
+these reasons, my sweet daughter, I constitute you by this letter a
+legitimate and equal co-heir with your brothers in all my estate, in
+such sort that you shall share with them not only the acquired property
+but the allodial land." In the abstract, therefore, as much could be
+said for as against the claims of a woman to succeed to the crown of
+France. There could be no question, however, that the long established
+custom of the kingdom had excluded women, and that this exclusion had
+operated to the great profit of the kingdom, by keeping it under the
+stronger rule of men, and more still by preventing it from passing under
+the control of foreign princes who had married French princesses. As a
+French constitutional lawyer has remarked: "France is the only one of
+the great states of Europe where we see the crown remaining for more
+than eight centuries in the same family.... It is to the Salic Law that
+France owes the long persistence of the Capetian dynasty."
+
+In the first half of the fourteenth century it was a danger of exactly
+the kind alluded to above that menaced the kingdom of France: a foreign
+prince claimed the throne as his heritage through his mother. In order
+to understand the absolute futility of the claim made by Edward III. of
+England, based on the alleged rights of his mother, Isabelle de France,
+daughter of Philippe le Bel, it is necessary only to recall that both
+Isabelle's brothers, Louis le Hutin and Charles le Bel, had left
+daughters who would have had prior rights if any woman could have
+inherited. The potent reasons of public polity which would also have
+absolutely excluded Isabelle and Edward III. have been mentioned above,
+and are stated in a different way by Froissart. He says that after the
+death of Charles IV., "the twelve peers and all the barons of France
+would not give the realm to Isabel the sister (of Charles IV., Louis X.,
+and Philippe V.), who was queen of England, because they said and
+maintained, and yet do, that the realm of France is so noble that it
+ought not to go to a woman, and so consequently not to Isabel, nor to
+the king of England her eldest son: for they determined the son of the
+woman to have no right nor succession by his mother, since they declared
+the mother to have no right: so that by these reasons the twelve peers
+and barons of France by their common accord did give the realm of France
+to the lord Philip of Valois, nephew sometime to Philip le Beau king of
+France." Then, as all the world knows, ensued the great wars between
+France and England of which Froissart tells with such evident enjoyment
+of deeds of valor and splendid martial pageants; for, he says, "sith the
+time of the good Charlemagne, king of France, there never fell so great
+adventures."
+
+The history of the Hundred Years' War is quite beyond the scope of this
+volume; but let us be humble camp followers of the great armies that
+march across Froissart's pages, where perchance we may find some women
+as amazons, as heroines, or as pitiful victims in this sanguinary and
+ruinous conflict.
+
+The first woman whom we note in this period, Jeanne de Montfort, was a
+veritable heroine of the wars, one known to us, through the enthusiastic
+record of Froissart, as an amazon, but hardly known at all as a woman.
+The only really interesting part of her career is that occurring during
+the wars in Brittany, and so we shall begin her history with these
+events. Marguerite, or Jeanne,--as she was called, perhaps because her
+husband's name was Jean,--de Montfort, wife of the Count de Montfort,
+was sister to the Count of Flanders. The countess, whom we shall call
+Jeanne, was already a matron when events in her husband's native
+Brittany called for his and her presence there. For generations,
+Brittany had been ruled by a line of princes who were regarded by the
+native population with far greater affection and respect than any king
+of France could inspire; for they were of an ancient house, associated
+with all the poetic legends of the land which, poets tell us, had been
+of the domain of the noble King Arthur. Half of Brittany was rather
+inclined to sympathy with France, owing to admixture of French blood,
+while the other half, _Bretagne bretonnante_, clung to the Celtic
+traditions and to those of England, the land once dominated by their
+race across the channel; but Bretons of any part of Brittany were
+Bretons first and always; the allegiance to their dukes was paramount;
+that to the King of France was quite an afterthought.
+
+When John III., Duke of Brittany and a descendant of that Pierre
+Mauclerc who caused such serious trouble to Blanche de Castille, died
+without issue in 1341, he left the succession to his duchy in a very
+uncertain state. He himself had intended that the ducal crown should go
+to his niece, Jeanne de Penthievre, the wife of Charles de Blois, rather
+than to Jean de Montfort, who was only a half-brother on the mother's
+side. To the ordinary mind it would seem that Jean de Montfort had at
+least a reasonable claim; but the Count de Blois was a nephew of
+Philippe VI., who would therefore throw all his influence against the
+family of Montfort, long allied in one way or another with England.
+
+Both Montfort and his wife realized that if the succession were left to
+the adjudication of the French Court of Peers, their claim would receive
+no consideration. Supported in his bold act by the ambitious and
+courageous Jeanne, the Count de Montfort, immediately after his
+half-brother's death, "went incontinent to Nantes, the sovereign city of
+all Bretayne," where his liberal promises and general fair conduct won
+him the confidence of the citizens, so that "he was received as their
+chief lord, as most next of blood to his brother deceased, and so (they)
+did to him homage and fealty. Then he and his wife, who had both the
+hearts of a lion, determined with their counsel to call a court and to
+keep a solemn feast at Nantes at a day limited, against the which day
+they sent for all the nobles and counsels of the good towns of Bretayne,
+to be there to do their homage and fealty to him as to their sovereign
+lord."
+
+While the new duke and duchess were waiting and hoping for a large
+accession of Breton knights on the day appointed for doing homage, the
+duke heard of a large treasure collected by the late duke and stored at
+Limoges. Leaving Jeanne at Nantes, he took a small body of knights and
+went to Limoges, where he was favorably received, and secured the
+treasure, with which he returned to Nantes in time for the appointed day
+of homage. But the Breton nobles were not at all inclined to flock to
+his banner and hail him as rightful duke, only one knight, Herve de
+Leon, appeared to do homage; and though seven out of nine bishops, and
+the burgesses of Nantes, Limoges, and some other towns, had declared for
+Montfort, his position was by no means secure. Nevertheless, he and
+Jeanne held their little court with what state they could, and
+determined to use the treasure taken from Limoges to pay for the defence
+of their duchy, hiring mercenaries, "so that they had a great number
+afoot and a-horseback, nobles and other of divers countries." With the
+aid of these forces,--not always required, for some places were quite
+ready to receive him as their lord,--Montfort took certain towns and
+fortresses, such as Brest, Rennes, Hennebon, and Vannes.
+
+Charles de Blois, baffled by the promptness and activity of Montfort and
+appalled at the rapidity with which the latter was making himself actual
+if not rightful Duke of Brittany, appealed to the King of France,
+presenting the claim of his wife, Jeanne de Penthievre. Montfort,
+summoned to appear before the French court, went first to England and
+did homage to Edward III. for Brittany. Returning to France, he obeyed
+the summons of Philippe, and went to Paris with a splendid retinue, says
+Froissart, of four hundred horse, leaving his countess to keep watch for
+him in Brittany. The show of force with which Montfort presented himself
+before the king did not have the effect of intimidating the latter, if
+it had been so intended, and Montfort moderated his tone in the
+interview with Philippe, denying positively that he had sworn fealty to
+Edward III., and merely urging his rights as nearest of kin to the late
+Duke of Brittany. Philippe appointed a day for the meeting of the Court
+of Peers to sit in judgment on the claims of the two heirs, and forbade
+Montfort to leave Paris during the next fifteen days. Montfort saw, from
+the reception accorded him by the crafty Philippe, that his case was
+already judged; "he sat and imagined many doubts"; if he remained in
+Paris and the verdict of the Peers went against him there was the
+certainty of arrest and imprisonment until he should have made an
+accounting for the treasure seized at Limoges and delivered up all the
+towns he had captured. Therefore he determined upon the course that
+would at least give him a chance of active resistance if the worst came
+to the worst; he fled from Paris secretly, and was with his wife in
+Nantes before the king was aware that the bird had flown. The event
+justified his distrust, for on September 7, 1341, the Court of Peers
+adjudged the duchy of Brittany to Jeanne de Penthievre and Charles de
+Blois.
+
+By the aid and counsel of his wife Montfort gathered his forces and
+garrisoned the towns he had taken, while Charles de Blois led a French
+army against him and soon had him beleaguered in Nantes. The events of
+this siege would not concern us, since the Countess Jeanne was not in
+Nantes, were it not for the peculiar interest attaching to certain
+episodes and the light they throw upon the remarkable character of
+Charles de Blois. This man was reputed a saint in his own day, so much
+so that, under Pope Urban V., an inquiry was held and a favorable report
+made but never acted upon for a formal canonization. We learn some most
+curious things from _The Life and Miracles of Charles, Duke of Brittany,
+of the House of France_, in regard to what was in those days considered
+evidence of saintliness. "He confessed himself morning and evening, and
+heard mass four or five times daily.... Did he meet a priest, down he
+flung himself from his horse upon his knees in the mud.... He put
+pebbles in his shoes." When he prayed he beat himself in the breast till
+he turned black in the face. Next his skin he wore a coarse garment of
+sackcloth, and "he did not change his sackcloth, although full of lice
+to a wonder; and when his groom of the chambers was about to clean the
+said sackcloth of them, the lord Charles said: 'Let be; remove not a
+single louse;' and said they did him no harm, and when they stung him he
+remembered his God." Truly, at such a price salvation would seem dear to
+many of us! Yet the history of the early Church is full of saints whose
+fanaticism assumed this extraordinary type, the predilection for bodily
+filth. With all this piety, Charles de Blois was unrelentingly cruel and
+even immoral; for he began the siege of Nantes by cutting off the heads
+of thirty knightly partisans of Montfort and throwing them over the
+walls, and when he himself lay dead on the battlefield "a bastard son of
+his, called Sir Jean de Blois, was slain by his side."
+
+Nantes was treacherously captured and Montfort treacherously seized and
+imprisoned by the holy Charles de Blois, who sent his rival to be
+confined in the tower of the Louvre at Paris. But the war was not over
+because the count was captured; there was still the countess to deal
+with, that lady, who, according to the enthusiastic Jean Froissart, "had
+the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. She was in the city of
+Rennes when her lord was taken, and howbeit that she had great sorrow at
+her heart, yet she valiantly recomforted her friends and soldiers, and
+showed them a little son that she had, called John, and said: 'Ah! sirs,
+be not cast down because of my lord, whom we have lost: he was but one
+man. See here my little child, who shall be, by the grace of God, his
+restorer (avenger) and who shall do well for you. I have riches in
+abundance, and I will give you thereof and will provide you with such a
+captain that you shall all be recomforted.' When she had thus comforted
+her friends and soldiers in Rennes, then she went to all her other
+fortresses and good towns, and led ever with her John her young son, and
+did to them as she did at Rennes, and fortified all her garrisons of
+everything that they wanted, and paid largely and gave freely, whereas
+she thought it well employed."
+
+Jeanne herself was no mean strategist and captain, and she selected for
+herself and her young son the strong castle of Hennebon, on the coast of
+Brittany, where they passed the winter, she keeping up her connection
+with the various garrisons and making preparations to resist Charles de
+Blois when he should have reduced Rennes. The siege of this latter place
+was not ended until May, 1342, when the citizens surrendered the town
+and did homage to Charles de Blois, who was then left free to undertake
+the capture of Jeanne de Montfort and her son. "The Earl being in
+prison, if they might get the Countess and her son it should make an end
+of all their war." Accordingly, the French army laid siege to Hennebon,
+establishing as complete a cordon around it as they could by land, the
+sea side necessarily remaining open, since they had no fleet to blockade
+the port.
+
+This siege of Hennebon is one of those romantic episodes of history
+learned or absorbed almost unconsciously in childhood, which lingers as
+a precious memory in the hearts of all who love the brave days of old.
+Even France could but forgive the fair and gallant Countess Jeanne,
+fighting so valiantly for the heritage of her husband; and whether in
+French or in English histories, we find a page or two reserved for
+Jeanne de Montfort, a picture of her, maybe, and all because the genius
+of Froissart has left us such a vivid narrative of the events at
+Hennebon. We shall tell the story, familiar to most of our readers, as
+nearly as possible in the style of Froissart.
+
+"When the countess and her company understood that the Frenchmen were
+coming to lay siege to the town of Hennebon, then it was commanded to
+sound the watch-bell alarm, and every man to be armed and draw to their
+defence." After some preliminary skirmishes, in which the French lost
+more than the Bretons, Charles's army encamped for the night about
+Hennebon. Next day the siege began with minor attacks, followed on the
+third day by a general assault. "The Countess herself ware harness on
+her body and rode on a great courser from street to street, desiring her
+people to make good defence, and she caused damosels and other women to
+tear up the pavements of the streets and carry stones to the battlements
+to cast upon their enemies, and great pots full of quicklime."
+
+"The Countess de Montfort did here a hardy feat of arms, and one which
+should not be forgotten. She had mounted a tower to see how her people
+fought and how the Frenchmen were ordered (_i. e._, disposed for the
+assault) without. She saw how that all the lords and all other people of
+the host were all gone out of their field to the assault. Then she
+bethought her of a great feat, and mounted once more her courser, all
+armed as she was, and caused three hundred men a-horseback to be ready,
+and went with them to another gate where was no assault. She and her
+company sallied out, and dashed into the camp of the French lords, and
+cut down tents and fired huts, the camp being guarded by none but
+varlets and boys, who ran away. When the lords of France looked behind
+them and saw their lodgings afire and heard the cry and noise there,
+they returned to the camp crying 'Treason! treason!' so that all the
+assault was left.
+
+"When the Countess saw that, she drew together her company, and when she
+saw that she could not enter again into the town without great damage,
+she went straight away toward the castle of Brest, which is but three
+leagues from there. When Sir Louis of Spain, who was marshal of the
+host, was come to the field, and saw their lodgings burning and the
+Countess and her company going away, he followed after her with a great
+force of men at arms. He chased her so near that he slew and hurt divers
+of them that were behind, evil horsed; but the Countess and the most
+part of her company rode so well that they came to Brest, where they
+were received with great joy by the townspeople."
+
+The astonishment and chagrin of the French knights upon hearing that the
+whole scheme had been conceived and actually carried out by a woman may
+well be imagined. They moved their scorched finery into other huts made
+of boughs, and prepared to capture the countess if she should return;
+but Jeanne was too good a captain to fall into the trap. Her faithful
+garrison in Hennebon, not knowing that she had reached Brest safely,
+were tormented by the misrepresentations of the besiegers, who told them
+they should never see her more. Five days of anxiety passed in this way,
+without any tidings of Jeanne. "The Countess did so much at Brest that
+she got together five hundred men, well armed and well mounted. And then
+she set out from Brest, and by the sunrising she came along by the one
+side of the host, and so came to one of the gates of Hennebon, the which
+was opened for her, and therein she entered and all her company, with
+great noise of trumpets and cymbals." Too late aware of the return of
+the valiant lady, the French nevertheless delivered another determined
+assault upon Hennebon, in which they lost more than did the defenders.
+Seeing the folly of confining all of his men to the siege of Hennebon,
+Charles de Blois drew off with part of his army and laid siege to Auray,
+while Louis of Spain and Herve de Leon, now on the side of the French,
+were left in charge of the operations at Hennebon.
+
+The besiegers had several large and powerful catapults, with which they
+so battered the walls of the town that the citizens "were sore abashed,
+and began to think of surrender." Among those in high place within
+Hennebon was the Bishop Guy de Leon, uncle of Herve de Leon, who now
+held a parley with his nephew and agreed to use his influence toward
+bringing about a surrender. "The Countess was suspicious of some evil
+design the moment the Bishop returned to the castle, and she prayed the
+lords of Brittany not to play her false and abandon her, for God's sake;
+for that she was in great hopes that she would have succor from England
+before three days. Howbeit the Bishop spake so much and showed so many
+reasons to the lords that they were in a great trouble all that night.
+The next morning they drew to council again, so that they were near of
+accord to have given up the town, and Sir Herve was come near to the
+town to have taken possession thereof. Then the Countess looked down
+along the sea, out at a window in the castle, and began to smile for
+great joy that she had to see the succors coming, the which she had so
+long desired. Then she cried out aloud and said twice: 'I see the
+succors of England coming.' Then they of the town ran to the walls and
+saw a great number of ships great and small coming towards Hennebon."
+
+We heave a sigh of relief with Jeanne de Montfort; for our sympathies
+are always with those who fight the good fight. And all the poetry of
+chivalry is suggested in the scene that followed, a scene in whose
+enthusiasm and half hysterical joy we can partly sympathize, for we know
+that the siege of Hennebon will be raised and that the lady and her son
+will go free. The ships in the offing were, indeed, the long delayed
+reinforcements which Amaury de Clisson had gone to fetch from England
+and which contrary winds had kept at sea sixty days. Bishop Guy de Leon,
+in a rage because the surrender he had arranged was not to take place,
+at once left the castle, and went over to the enemy: not an irreparable
+loss, one would fancy, that counsellor who was ready to treat with the
+countess's enemies behind her back.
+
+The departure of a lukewarm adherent could not mar the joy of the loyal
+defenders of Hennebon. "Then the Countess dressed up halls and chambers
+to lodge the lords of England that were coming, with much joy, and did
+send to meet them with great courtesy. And when they were a-land she
+came to them with great reverence and feasted them the best she might,
+and thanked them right humbly, for great had been her need. And all the
+company, knights and squires and others, she caused to be lodged at
+their ease in the castle and in the town, and the next day prepared a
+sumptuous feast for them."
+
+The leader of the English forces which came to the relief of Hennebon
+was that chivalrous Sir Walter de Manny, known and loved by all admirers
+of Froissart and the Black Prince. This bold and doughty knight had no
+sooner tasted of the Countess Jeanne's good cheer than he began looking
+about him for some adventure that might profit her and her beleaguered
+garrison. The huge catapults erected by the French were still doing
+damage to the town, and one of these Sir Walter determined to put out of
+action. With the aid of some of the Breton knights a rapid sally was
+made, and the "engine" was pulled to pieces, there being but a handful
+of men in immediate proximity to defend it. But when the French knights
+saw what was happening and hurried to the rescue it behooved the English
+knights to beat a retreat. Nevertheless, Sir Walter de Manny cried: "Let
+me never more be loved by my dear lady, if I have not one bout with
+these fellows." So he and some others rode full tilt at the French
+knights, and then, says Froissart, with his love of a fight and of the
+comic, there "were several turned heels over head... and many noble
+deeds were done on both sides," till Sir Walter drew off his men and
+retired to the shelter of the castle walls. "Then the Countess descended
+down from the castle with a glad cheer and came and kissed Sir Walter de
+Manny and his companions, one after another, two or three times, like a
+valiant lady."
+
+Neither the lady nor Sir Walter shall we blame for this kiss, given with
+no thought of unfaithfulness to the husband for whom she was fighting;
+it was sheer mad joy that inspired her, and the little incident is
+typical of the character of this good lady, so full-blooded, so staunch,
+so sturdy a warrior.
+
+Temporarily worsted at Hennebon, Charles de Blois retired from before it
+and went to besiege and capture other places in Brittany. Jeanne de
+Montfort had not sufficient troops to make head against him in these
+enterprises, and had to look on from Hennebon while he took Dinan,
+Vannes, Auray, and other places, in spite of the diversions created by
+Sir Walter de Manny and the English allies. After the capitulation of
+Carhaix, Charles de Blois returned to the attack upon Hennebon, where he
+was joined by his lieutenant, Louis of Spain, disgruntled by a recent
+defeat at Quimperle inflicted by Walter de Manny. The siege was again
+fruitless, and, during a truce agreed upon between the combatants, the
+countess obtained a chance to enlist more active assistance.
+
+Jeanne hurried over to England to implore more aid from Edward. At that
+time the great king was unworthily occupied in his pursuit of the
+Countess of Salisbury, in whose honor tournaments were held and
+magnificent feasts given in London. In these gayeties the Countess de
+Montfort must have shared with but a sad heart; for that heart was set
+upon securing aid to win back her husband's patrimony in Brittany, now
+all overrun by the adherents of Charles de Blois. At length Edward did
+grant her plea, and she set sail for Brittany with a force of men at
+arms under command of Robert d'Artois.
+
+Louis of Spain, with a fleet of Genoese ships, was waiting for the
+English off the coast of Guernsey, where a great naval battle was
+fought. As the ships neared each other, the Genoese crossbowmen hailed
+arrows upon the English, who hastened to grapple. "And when the lords,
+knights, and squires came near together, there was a sore battle. The
+countess that day was worth a man; she had the heart of a lion, and in
+her hand she wielded a sharp glaive, wherewith she fought fiercely." The
+English had the better of this hand-to-hand contest, but both sides were
+glad to draw off in the night. The elements roused to battle, and a
+great tempest wrought much havoc among the ships. After having some of
+their stores captured and ships wrecked, the English "took a little
+haven not far from the city of Vannes, whereof they were right glad."
+
+The first task of the countess and her allies was the capture of Vannes,
+which was accomplished without serious loss. Leaving Robert d'Artois
+with a garrison to hold this city, Jeanne and Walter de Manny went to
+loyal Hennebon, while English forces under the Earls of Pembroke and
+Salisbury laid siege to Rennes. But Herve de Leon and Olivier de
+Clisson, that rough and sturdy knight called "the butcher," recovered
+Vannes, during the defence of which Robert d'Artois was sorely wounded.
+He came to Hennebon to recover from his wounds, but grew worse, and
+finally returned to England, where he died. This ally of the Countess de
+Montfort was the same Robert d'Artois who had sought to deprive the
+Countess Mahaut of her heritage. He was a man of most unhappy character,
+and rested under the cloud of charges of forgery and other malpractices.
+To conclude briefly the part of his story which connects him with Mahaut
+d'Artois, we may recall the claim he made upon Artois just before
+Mahaut's death, based upon documents forged for him by the wicked Jeanne
+de Divion. When Jeanne was brought up to be interrogated, her whole
+story broke down the attempts to employ the black art against the king,
+which she ascribed to Mahaut, and the documents she had pretended to
+discover in the archives of Thierry d'Hirecon--all was shown to be but
+puerile fabrication. It was in vain for her to protest that she had
+acted in these things at the instigation of the wife of Robert d'Artois;
+she was burned as a witch and a forger. Robert, terrified by the
+unmasking of his complicity in the forgery, did not await his trial, but
+fled to Flanders and thence to England, while his wife, Jeanne de
+Valois, although she was the king's sister, was banished to Normandy. It
+was the utter wreck of the fortunes of the pair. We regret to find the
+name of Jeanne de Montfort linked with that of this pitiful, disgraced
+knight, whom people did not hesitate to accuse of having poisoned his
+aunt, Mahaut d'Artois, and her daughter, Jeanne, both of whom had died
+suddenly within a few months of each other.
+
+The war was now to assume proportions far greater than had been at first
+contemplated; it was become a war between the two kingdoms, and in this
+greater drama we all but lose sight of Jeanne de Montfort. Michelet
+remarks that, with curious inconsistency, Philippe VI. was upholding in
+Brittany the right of the female line, while he denied that right in his
+own kingdom, and Edward III. espoused the right of the male line in
+Brittany and maintained that of the female in France. The inconsistency
+mattered not to either monarch; in each case merely a pretext was sought
+for increasing the dignity of his own crown.
+
+Jean de Montfort, in whose behalf his countess had been conducting the
+war in Brittany, escaped from his prison in the Louvre in the spring of
+1345, and made his way to England. Furnished with an army by Edward, he
+returned to Brittany, but was repulsed before Quimper, and died at
+Hennebon, in September, leaving his claims to his young son and their
+prosecution to his heroic widow. With the aid of the English, Jeanne
+continued the struggle, and had the usual fortunes of war, now victor,
+now vanquished, in a strife that came to be known as the war of the
+three ladies. The three ladies were Jeanne herself, Jeanne de Clisson,
+and Jeanne de Penthievre. Jeanne de Clisson and her boy fled from the
+French to the Countess of Montfort, after Philippe VI., in 1345, had
+treacherously seized and executed Olivier de Clisson; Jeanne de
+Penthievre was left, like Jeanne de Montfort, to support her own claims,
+for Charles de Blois, her husband, coming into Brittany and laying siege
+to the fortress of La Roche-Darien, had been surprised and captured by
+the Countess de Montfort at the head of her English troops. While he was
+held prisoner in England, Jeanne de Penthievre made herself the head of
+her party, a leader in field and in council not unworthy to rival Jeanne
+de Montfort.
+
+Fortune favored the cause of the house of Montfort, and Jeanne had the
+pleasure of seeing her son win first a temporary advantage, then a
+complete victory over the house of Blois. At the battle of Auray Charles
+was slain, and the treaty of Guerande, negotiated soon after (1364),
+finally recognized the young Jean de Montfort as Duke of Brittany, while
+Jeanne de Penthievre had to content herself with the county of
+Penthievre and the viscounty of Limoges. Brittany was weary of the war
+which had desolated the land from 1342 to 1364, and the battle of Auray
+had been the decisive struggle, in which both sides had determined to
+win or lose all.
+
+Of the private character of Jeanne de Montfort we cannot speak with any
+degree of assurance, since the information we possess is very slight.
+Hume has ventured to characterize her as "the most extraordinary woman
+of the age," which is in some respects true enough. In those qualities
+admired by chivalry she was unquestionably an extraordinary woman;
+courageous and personally valiant, with a head to plan daring exploits
+and a heart to conduct her through the thick of the danger, impulsive
+and generous, a free-handed ruler, and an admirer of those deeds of
+chivalrous daring in others which she was only too ready to share
+herself. No Eleanor of Guienne have we here, masquerading in tinsel
+armor at the head of a troop of stage amazons, but a gallant lady
+charging her foes sword in hand. One cannot read her story without
+enthusiasm; and yet one would gladly know more of the woman before
+bestowing unreserved praise upon the countess "who was worth a man in
+the fight," and "who had the heart of a lion."
+
+With all the brilliance and the heroism of these wars between England
+and France, the glory is not untarnished; for the very patterns of
+chivalry were too often guilty of most atrocious cruelties. Charles, the
+saintly Count of Blois, cutting off the heads of the Breton knights and
+throwing them over the walls of Nantes; Philippe VI. inviting the
+Bretons to a tourney, and then seizing and executing them; the Count de
+Lisle hurling from a catapult, over the walls of Auberoche, the
+miserable servant who had ventured to bear letters from the garrison
+through his lines; these, and more than these, are the sort of things
+one finds even in the pages of Froissart, who was so careful to conceal
+the unpleasant and to bring into the light of genius the chivalrous
+episodes in his chronicle of the wars. For the weak and the fallen there
+is little of pity; a word as some brave knight falls, a word of the
+sorrow of those dependent upon him, and on we go to fresh fields, fresh
+knightly exploits and pageants. Though the very spirit of chivalry is in
+the air, how little thought is given to woman! It is only the rare
+masculine qualities of a Jeanne de Montfort that can win her grudging
+notice from Froissart.
+
+When such is the spirit animating the great chronicler of the age, it is
+rather remarkable that we find even three or four women winning such
+fame as to be remembered. The great war will in time bring forth the
+greatest heroine of France; yet it may be questioned whether Jeanne
+d'Arc would have received even fair treatment at the hands of Froissart,
+if the knight-chronicler had lived to see the glory of this wonderful
+peasant girl illumine all France. We may guess that Jeanne the saint,
+even Jeanne the valiant warrior (he loved warriors better than saints),
+would have been for him but Jeanne the peasant, the miserable child of
+some more miserable Jacques Bonhomme, to whom the courtly chronicler
+would have referred with contempt, scorn, or brutal hate.
+
+The horrors of war are not allowed on the scene in the chronicles from
+which we draw most of our information about Jeanne de Montfort; but it
+is pleasant to find in these same pages at least one recognition of the
+higher and better role of woman, as intercessor for the distressed. We
+allude, of course, to the famous and beautiful story of Philippa of
+Hainault saving the citizens of Calais, a story which we shall venture
+to sketch once more, in order to bring before our readers a famous
+character and a famous scene in history.
+
+For eight months the English army had lain before Calais, while the king
+stubbornly persevered in his determination to reduce the town and the
+garrison as stubbornly determined to resist to the death. Edward had
+built for his camp a regular town about Calais, and starvation had at
+last reduced the citizens to the point of submission. Jean de Vienne,
+the commander of the garrison, parleyed with Edward's representatives,
+but no terms could be obtained; the absolute surrender of the entire
+garrison was demanded, with the threat of death for the bravest of them,
+or Edward would go on with the siege till there should be absolute
+necessity of yielding. To these terms Jean de Vienne nobly refused to
+consent. Walter de Manny and other knights pleaded with the king to be
+more merciful, if not out of kindness of heart then at least out of
+policy, for fear of reprisals on the part of the French. The peculiarly
+harsh and puerile conditions then proposed by Edward are well known:
+"Sir Walter de Manny, say then to the captain of Calais that the
+greatest grace that he and his shall find in me is that six of the chief
+burgesses of the town come out to me bareheaded, barefooted, and
+bare-legged, and in their shirts, with halters about their necks, and
+with the keys of the town and the castle in their hands. With these six
+will I deal as pleases me; the rest I will admit to mercy."
+
+Jean de Vienne announced the terms to the citizens, and even he wept
+that he should have to bring them such cruel terms. "After a little
+while there rose the most rich burgess of the town, called Eustace de
+St. Pierre, and said openly: 'Sirs, great and small, great mischief it
+should be to suffer to die such people as be in this town, by famine or
+otherwise, when there is a means to save them.... As for my part, I have
+so good trust in our Lord God, that if I die in the quarrel to save the
+residue, that God would pardon me of all my sins; wherefore to save them
+I will be the first to put my life in jeopardy.'"
+
+Beside the quiet heroism of this rich merchant of old Calais, what
+tinsel seems the glory of the best of Froissart's favorite knights!
+"King Edward may have been the victor,... as being the strongest, but
+you are the hero of the siege of Calais! Your story is sacred, and your
+name has been blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of
+patriotism and sacrifice, Eustace de Saint-Pierre shall be beloved and
+remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which stood before
+King Edward. What collar of chivalry is to be compared to that glorious
+order which you wear? Think,... how out of the myriad millions of our
+race, you, and some few more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and
+honour." Well does Eustace de Saint-Pierre merit the enthusiastic
+phrases which we have copied from one who was no historian, but a great
+man with a great heart William Makepeace Thackeray! For "greater love
+hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
+
+Heroism was contagious in those days as for all time, and the example of
+Eustace de Saint-Pierre was speedily followed by five of his fellow
+townsmen. Let us now pass to the heroine of the story, Queen Philippa.
+When the six burgesses, in their humble state, were led to the feet of
+the haughty and relentless Edward, all pleas were vain to save them, the
+king turning away in wrath even from the faithful Walter de Manny and
+commanding that the hangman be summoned. "Then the Queen, being great
+with child, kneeled down, and sore weeping said: 'Ah, gentle sir, sith I
+passed the sea in great peril I have desired nothing of you; therefore
+now I humbly require you in the honour of the son of the Virgin Mary and
+for the love of me that ye will take mercy of these six burgesses.' The
+King beheld the Queen and stood still in a study a space, and then said:
+'Ah, dame, I would ye had been as now in some other place; ye make such
+request to me that I cannot deny you. Wherefore I give them to you, to
+do your pleasure with them.' Then the Queen caused them to be brought
+into her chamber, and made the halters to be taken from their necks, and
+caused them to be new clothed, and gave them their dinner at their
+leisure; and then she gave each of them six nobles, and made them to be
+brought out of the host in safeguard and set at their liberty."
+
+A noble picture is this of the clemency of a woman where the prayers of
+men availed not; and we join Jean Froissart in honoring his royal
+patroness and mistress, "the most gentle Queen, most liberal and most
+courteous that ever was Queen in her days, the which was the fair lady
+Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England and Ireland." But it was not for
+her mercifulness alone or even in chief that Froissart admired her; he
+chiefly praises her because she was a woman warrior almost as determined
+and successful as Jeanne de Montfort, and had come to Calais fresh from
+her victories over the Scots, of which Froissart gives a careful and
+glowing account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AT THE COURT OF THE MAD KING
+
+THAT France which had known queens good and bad, from Constance in the
+tenth to Blanche of Castille in the thirteenth century, was delivered
+over, toward the close of the fourteenth, to the hands of one of the
+worst women in her history. The woes of France under the rule of the mad
+King Charles VI. would have been enough to bear; but the Court of France
+was led in a veritable saturnalia by the licentious Queen Isabeau de
+Baviere. Once more, in Isabeau, we find a woman whose life-story cannot
+be told without at the same time telling much of the history of France;
+but it is not because the queen does anything good that we must tell of
+the government of the kingdom during her ascendancy; she does nothing
+but indulge her vulgar tastes for pleasure and debauchery, to satisfy
+which she would pawn France itself.
+
+In 1380, died the wise though unlovely Charles V., leaving the kingdom
+temporarily free from the English and in just that nice state of balance
+between recuperation and ruin when a little thing would suffice to turn
+the scale either way. His son and heir was a boy of twelve, already
+madly fond of pleasure, already filling his weak head with fantastic
+tales of chivalry and romantic devotion to such sturdy warriors as Du
+Guesclin, whom he could never hope to rival. His reign begins in a
+dream--a dream of his meeting a fantastic flying hart, which he took for
+his emblem. The dream goes on, in mad festivities encouraged by Philippe
+le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, who had chief charge of the boy. This
+Philippe--that same brave son of King John whom we see at Poitiers
+fighting by his father's side--was a great man, though not lovable; he
+was too acute a politician to be altogether admirable. In one of the
+grand shows arranged for the boy king on the occasion of the double
+marriage of the son and the daughter of Philippe de Bourgogne to the
+daughter and the son of Duke Alberic of Bavaria, the Duchess of Brabant,
+whom Froissart calls a woman "full of good counsel," suggested to the
+king's uncles that it would be well to find a wife for the young king in
+the same powerful family now allied to the house of Burgundy. Nothing
+could have better suited the plans of Philippe de Bourgogne, who
+accordingly sent portrait painters to reproduce the charms of the
+respective candidates for the hand of the king, and from the portraits
+selected Isabeau de Baviere, daughter of Etienne II. and a princess of
+the great Italian family of Visconti.
+
+The young Isabeau, whose portrait showed her to be the most beautiful of
+the princesses to be chosen from, was brought into Brabant by her uncle,
+under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint John of Amiens,
+while the Duke of Burgundy at the same time found an excuse for
+conducting Charles to Amiens, without giving him the slightest hint of
+the purpose of the journey. Isabeau was presented to the king by the
+Duchesses of Brabant and Bourgogne, and kneeled low before him, lifting
+up her sweet girlish face to him in lieu of speaking in a tongue as yet
+unknown to her. Then Charles took her by the hand, raised her and looked
+at her pensively; "and in this look the sweet thought of love did enter
+into his heart." After the ladies had withdrawn from the royal presence,
+the Sire de la Riviere, an old minister of Charles V., asked the king:
+"Sire, what think you of this young lady? shall she remain with us?" "By
+my faith, yes," replied Charles, "we wish no other, for she pleases us."
+There was no tarrying for elaborate ceremonies, fond as the king was of
+them; Charles insisted on an immediate wedding. He and the young German
+princess were married on July 17, 1385, four days after this first
+interview. The bride was but fourteen, and the groom not quite
+seventeen; it was one of those infamous child marriages of which the
+history of Europe is too full.
+
+Isabeau de Baviere was already of a slothful habit, to be roused only by
+her love of amusement, to purchase which neither she nor her young
+husband would spare anything. Luxury and wild extravagance in dress, in
+entertainments, even in funerals, was characteristic of the age; the
+whole kingdom gave itself up to extravagance and debauchery; existence
+was one mad revel, with no thought of who should pay the piper; all must
+dance and caper as if bitten by the tarantula. The very costumes are
+wild: "Here (we see) men-women comically tricked out, and effeminately
+trailing on the ground robes twelve ells long; there, others, whose
+figures are distinctly defined by their short Bohemian jackets and tight
+pantaloons, though with sleeves floating down to the ground; here,
+men-beasts, embroidered all over with animals of every kind; there,
+men-music, pricked all over with notes, from which one could sing before
+or behind; while others placarded themselves with a scrawl of signs and
+letters, which, no doubt, said nothing good.... Rational beings did not
+hesitate to disguise themselves in the satanic, bestial shapes which
+grin down upon us from the eaves of churches. Women wore horns on their
+heads, men on their feet the peaks of their shoes were twisted up into
+horns, griffins, serpents' tails. The women, above all, would have made
+our spirits (of the age of Saint Louis) tremble; with their bosoms
+exposed, they haughtily paraded high above the heads of the men their
+gigantic hennin (the peaked and horned headdress) with its scaffolding
+of horns, requiring them to turn sideways and stoop as often as they
+went in or out of a room."
+
+With all this outlandish fashion of dress the young queen was in perfect
+accord; and the life of the court was one succession of brilliant
+entertainments, wicked in their sensuality no less than in their waste
+of the revenues of a kingdom already impoverished by long wars. During
+the early years of her presence--we cannot call it her rule--in France,
+Isabeau took no part in politics; neither did her husband, for that
+matter, since he left the government in the hands of his uncles, chief
+of whom was Philippe de Bourgogne. We shall therefore have little to
+record at first beyond some of the more noteworthy of the doings at the
+court.
+
+The first of these, and one of the most scandalous, occurred in May,
+1388; and the occasion which it was intended to celebrate merits some
+attention from those who would appreciate the utter incapacity of
+Charles VI. even at this period. To understand the circumstances we must
+go back to the time when Charles V. lay dying, and his brother, Louis,
+Duke of Anjou, waited in an adjoining room till the breath should be out
+of the king's body. When the king was really dead, out came Louis to
+seize upon the plate and other movables of value. Hearing that Charles
+had concealed a considerable treasure in the walls of his palace at
+Melun, and being unable to discover the hiding place, this affectionate
+brother sent for the treasurer of the late king, and uttered the grim
+threat: "You will find that money for me, or off goes your head." The
+executioner was there with his ax--the treasure was found; and Louis
+carried it off to squander it in prosecuting his claims to the throne of
+Naples. Now he was dead, and his two sons were about to leave France to
+continue the fight for Naples. So far from remembering with resentment
+the enormous sums formerly stolen from him by this very family, Charles
+VI. must needs squander more in a splendid show to celebrate the
+knighting of the princes of Anjou.
+
+That ceremony in which the young soldier of God swore to defend the
+right, with all the solemn and impressive ritual that the Church could
+devise to sanctify and dignify his act, was to be turned into a vile
+debauch. In the ancient abbey of Saint-Denis, beside the tombs of the
+great dead who had glorified France, were lodged "the Queen and a bevy
+of illustrious ladies." Monastery or no monastery, the monks must harbor
+these fair guests, whom all the rules of their order would have rigidly
+excluded. Says the chronicle of a monk of Saint-Denis: "To gaze on their
+exceeding beauty you would have said it was a meeting of the heathen
+goddesses." And so they were, heathen goddesses, with a lawless Venus at
+their head. But the festival, be it remembered, was a religious one; we
+go "to hear mass every morning." The religious services over, the day
+was given up to magnificent tourneys and rich banquets, and the nights
+to balls, masked balls, "to hide blushes." For three days and three
+nights was this revel maintained, the mad Bacchanals scrupling not to
+defile even the most sacred places by their orgies, which the presence
+of the king and queen rather encouraged than checked. It was the queen
+herself, indeed, who loved all this. One does not wonder that people
+began to whisper that she had already shown more than decorous affection
+for her brother-in-law, the brilliant Louis d'Orleans; in the
+_pervigilium Veneris_, the "wake of Venus," as they called the balls at
+Saint-Denis, who could say what might have happened?
+
+The king attained his majority; in a sudden fit of impatience, he threw
+off the control of his uncles, till now the rulers of France, and set up
+his own government. The royal princes had not been good governors; each
+one was too intent upon his own interests to consider those of France;
+and accordingly France hated them, and hoped for better things from the
+young king and his sober government of humble counsellors. But Charles
+needed excitement; in lieu of war there were fetes, upon which he
+squandered money till the people groaned and the councillors trembled.
+Any excuse was sufficient for holding a fete. Of a sudden, Charles and
+Isabeau remembered that the queen had never been crowned and had never
+made a royal entry into Paris. The city was ordered to make unexampled
+preparations to receive Isabeau as queen; she had been living in Paris a
+good part of the time during the four years since her marriage, but that
+did not do away with the necessity for a formal introduction to the
+capital of her dominions.
+
+With his usual love of the spectacular, Froissart gives us an account,
+covering many pages, of the reception of Isabeau. The Parisians dressed
+themselves in gay costumes of scarlet, and green, and gold, each vying
+with his neighbor and rivalling, as far as he dared, the gorgeousness of
+the courtiers and nobles. The fountains ran wine and milk, the balconies
+and windows were festooned with flowers and crowded with eager
+spectators, while musicians played before the doors of many houses and
+miracle plays were given on the street corners. On August 22nd, the
+young queen, hailed at every step by the acclamations of the throngs in
+the streets, and accompanied by a crowd of noble ladies borne in
+sumptuous litters, passed from Saint-Denis to Paris. At the Porte
+Saint-Denis there was a canopy representing "heaven, made full of stars,
+and within it young children apparelled like angels," and an "image of
+Our Lady herself," holding the infant Saviour. Two of the angels, let
+down from heaven by ropes, placed a golden crown upon Isabeau's head,
+singing: "Sweet lady amid the _fleur-de-lis_, are you not from heaven?"
+
+"Then when the Queen and the ladies were passed by," having greatly
+admired this "high heaven richly apparelled with the arms of France, the
+device of the king," they proceeded along the street till they came to a
+place where was a fountain, "which was covered over with a cloth of fine
+azure, painted full of flower-de-luces of gold.... And out of this
+fountain there issued in great streams spiced drinks and claret, and
+about this fountain there were young maidens richly apparelled, with
+rich chaplets on their heads, singing melodiously: great pleasure it was
+to hear them. And they held in their hands cups and goblets of gold,
+offering and giving to drink all such as passed by; and the Queen rested
+there and regaled herself and regarded them, having great pleasure in
+that device, and so did all other ladies and damosels that saw it."
+
+Passing onward to where stood the Church of Saint James, "all the street
+of Saint-Denis was covered over with cloths of silk and camlet, such
+plenty as though such cloths should cost nothing. And I, Sir John
+Froissart, author of this history, was present and saw all this and had
+great wonder where such number of cloths of silk were gotten; there was
+as great plenty as though they had been in Alexandria or Damascus; and
+all the houses on both sides of the great street of Saint-Denis were
+hanged with cloths of Arras of divers histories, the which was pleasure
+to behold."
+
+At the "bridge of Paris," hard by Notre-Dame, fresh wonders awaited the
+queen. A master tumbler, from Genoa, "had tied a cord on the highest
+house of the bridge of Saint-Michael over all the houses, and the other
+end was tied on the highest tower in Our Lady's church. And as the Queen
+passed by, and was in the street called Our Lady's street, because it
+was late, this said master with two burning candles in his hands issued
+out of a little stage that he had made on the height of Our Lady's
+tower, and singing he went upon the cord all along the great street, so
+that all saw him and had marvel how it might be." This tumbler, dressed
+as an angel, gave another crown to Isabeau, and then mounting skyward
+disappeared through a slit in the canopy over the bridge, as if he were
+returning to heaven.
+
+In the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Isabeau was crowned, saying, says
+Froissart,--not without an equivocation of which he himself was
+doubtless quite unconscious,--"what prayers she pleased." But the
+festivities were not over; we have omitted many a detail given by
+Froissart plays and dumb shows presenting indiscriminately the sacred
+histories of Scripture and the legends of French heroes, castles full of
+mock monsters, representations of the entire heavenly hierarchy and of
+the dream which had suggested to Charles the emblem of the flying hart.
+With gay balls at night and jousts and miracle plays by day, the
+celebration was continued for several days. The merchants of Paris
+presented to the queen and to Valentine Visconti, the new Duchess of
+Orleans, most costly jewels, rich sets of plate, in gold and silver,
+cups, and salvers, and dishes of gold, "whereat everyone marvelled
+greatly," and the royal pair were greatly pleased.
+
+Who was to pay for all the display in this entry of the queen? The
+citizens of Paris had fondly hoped that, what with their show of loyal
+joy and their presents,--aggregating some sixty thousand crowns in
+gold,--the king would be pleased to remit certain oppressive taxes. On
+the contrary, it was the citizens of Paris who were compelled to pay for
+all this fine foolery. Charles departed from Paris a few days after the
+conclusion of his fete, leaving behind him an increased tax and an
+ordinance prohibiting, under penalty of death, the use of certain silver
+coins of small value; this latter restriction, which was intended to
+favor the circulation of his new and debased coinage, inflicted peculiar
+hardships upon the poor. Thus, Isabeau was already inflicting much
+misery upon the poor of that capital which had lavished so much upon
+her; and before we bestow our commiseration upon the miserable king in
+after days, it is well to remember the miseries of his subjects.
+
+Life had been as yet but a dream for Charles and his queen; though
+France was rapidly going to ruin under their extravagant and heedless
+rule, could they not chase away care in revels surpassing any that
+France had yet seen? But the dream was soon to become a nightmare, the
+hideous nightmare of insanity, for this heedless monarch.
+
+It was not until three years after the coronation of Isabeau that her
+unfortunate husband had the first attack of what was, unmistakably,
+insanity, though to any reasonable creature the behavior of the whole
+court would have seemed mad enough from the beginning. One of those acts
+of lawless private vengeance which were so soon to become dreadfully
+familiar in France first excited the king almost to the point of frenzy.
+A certain Pierre de Craon, a noble who had already distinguished himself
+by robbing the late Duke of Anjou, was driven from Paris by the Duke of
+Orleans, to whose wife he had imprudently revealed some of the
+infidelities of her too licentious husband. He fled to Jean de Montfort,
+who persuaded him that the person chiefly responsible for his disgrace
+was the renowned Olivier de Clisson, Conetable of France. Secretly
+returning to Paris, Pierre de Craon lay in wait for the constable one
+night and fell upon him with a band of bravoes. The brave De Clisson was
+seriously wounded, and the villains fled, thinking him slain. Charles,
+who favored De Clisson, was furious at the outrage, and breathed
+vengeance against Craon. As Jean de Montfort constituted himself the
+defender of this wretch, and refused to deliver him up to justice, the
+lands belonging to Craon were devastated, his wife and children were
+driven forth, and war was declared upon Brittany.
+
+The king had always had a passionate love for the more theatrical side
+of war, and, as soon as the constable was able to ride, the king and his
+forces marched upon Brittany. We may pass over the earlier part of his
+campaign, taken up in aimless marches and as aimless parleying. On
+August 5, 1392, during a spell of intensely hot weather, Charles marched
+out of Mans. He had been suffering from a fever, was much weakened, and
+had for days been greatly harassed by the heat and the baffling of his
+delayed vengeance; he was moody, and "his spirits sore troubled and
+travailed," when, as he rode through the forest of Mans, there suddenly
+rushed to his horse's head a wild figure, half clothed, and manifestly
+mad. Seizing the king's bridle, the apparition exclaimed, with that
+strange earnestness so often noticeable in those whose reason is
+unbalanced: "Sir King, ride no further forward, for thou art betrayed."
+The servants hastily drove away the poor madman, and sought to restore
+the king's peace of mind, more seriously disturbed than ever by a
+happening that might well have startled even a person in strong health.
+On rode the cavalcade, out over the open plains, where a blazing sun
+beat full upon the king's head, protected only by a thin cap. Suddenly
+Charles started, checked his horse, drew his sword, and charged upon the
+pages who rode beside him, crying, as if in the heat of battle: "On, on!
+down with these traitors!" Madly pursuing the pages, he put to flight
+even the Duke of Orleans, and was not overpowered and disarmed until he
+and his horse were quite exhausted.
+
+He recognized none of those about him, and only physical weakness
+prevented him from becoming again a frantic lunatic. The poor weak
+brain, over-excited and worn-out by the long years of debauchery, was
+hopelessly overthrown; though sane at times, and even for considerable
+periods, Charles VI. was evermore incapable of ruling, being a mere
+helpless and unhappy tool in the hands of the heartless people who could
+win sufficient power to rule what was left of France.
+
+The queen was no Blanche de Castille, able to rule a kingdom, and the
+king's uncle, Philippe de Bourgogne, was at first the real power in
+France. He was opposed by Isabeau de Baviere and her paramour and
+brother-in-law, Louis d'Orleans, brother of the king; and the history of
+the next few years is largely a record of shameless intrigues between
+these people to obtain control of the mad king, in whose name many an
+odious thing was done. The regency should, by rights, have devolved upon
+the king's eldest brother, Louis d'Orleans, who was twenty-one years of
+age at the time of Charles's madness; but the Dukes of Burgundy and
+Berri set him aside for "his too great youth." There might have been
+found some precedent for recognizing Isabeau as regent; but there is no
+evidence that she ever made any serious efforts to establish her claim;
+for she was content with that which the Duke of Burgundy was quite
+willing to allow her, viz., the squandering of money--not his money--in
+her pleasures. Isabeau was nominally associated in the council that
+exercised the powers of regency, but she was really under the control of
+the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the chroniclers call "a haughty and cruel
+woman."
+
+With such care as the doctors of the period were likely to give him,
+there was not much hope of the permanent restoration of the king's
+reason. One learned physician, however, did have the correct idea as to
+the cause of Charles's malady and prescribed a moderate diet and a quiet
+life for him. Under this wise treatment Charles soon recovered as much
+reason as he had ever had; but the regimen imposed by the physician's
+orders was as distasteful to the king as it was to Isabeau. The queen,
+under pretext of furnishing diversions for him, began again the wild
+life of debauchery which had been the prime cause of Charles's insanity.
+It was at one of these festivals that occurred the famous "dance of
+savages" that so nearly deprived France of her mad king.
+
+The chronicler of Saint-Denis says that "it was an evil custom of the
+time in many parts of France to indulge unreproved in all sorts of
+indecent follies at the marriage of a widow, and to assume with their
+extravagant masks and disguises the liberty of making all sorts of
+obscene remarks to the bride and bridegroom." It was at a sort of
+charivari held one night (January 29, 1393) in celebration of the
+marriage of one of Isabeau's German waiting women, a widow, that Hugues
+de Guisay, one of those panders to the follies of the rich and
+extravagant who plan their "amusements" for them, undertook to divert
+the mad king, the queen, and the whole court. He devised "six coats made
+of linen cloth covered with pitch and thereon flax like hair." Charles
+put on one of these, and he and his five satyr-like companions, much
+delighted with their resemblance to things of horrid form, pranced in
+among the other revellers. The five were linked together by a chain, the
+king, fortunately, being loose and preceding them. As the wretched
+Charles, in his disgraceful costume, was trying to fulfil the part of a
+satyr indeed by teasing and exchanging coarse jests with the young
+Duchess of Berri, Louis d'Orleans came into the room. Wishing to
+discover who it was so disguised--we refuse to credit the account which
+says he acted in mere heedless desire to see what would happen--he held
+a torch too near one of the tow-clad gallants. In an instant the whole
+five unhappy victims of folly were in a blaze. "Save the King! save the
+King!" cried one of them as he burned. Fortunately the Duchess of Berri,
+guessing that it was the king who stood by her, covered him with her
+cloak and prevented his costume from catching fire. Four of the others,
+whom not a soul in this gay assemblage seems to have made serious
+attempts to rescue, were burned to death, one escaping by jumping into a
+large tub of water in the pantry. Among those who died was the wanton
+deviser of this foolish and dangerous amusement; and as his body was
+borne to the tomb through the streets of Paris the people cursed him and
+called out after him, as he had been wont to speak to the poor when it
+pleased him to amuse himself with them: "Bark, dog!"
+
+Wonderful to relate, this scene of horror at the dance of savages does
+not appear to have occasioned an immediate relapse on the part of the
+king. Isabeau, who had manifested extreme terror and sympathy at the
+moment of her husband's peril, joined him in making virtuous resolutions
+to lead a more regular and sober life. But the love of pleasure was too
+firmly rooted; there were renewed debauches, and Charles became more
+violently mad than before, knowing neither his wife nor his children,
+and even denying his own identity. And so it continued throughout his
+life: following the regimen of his doctors, Charles would have a lucid
+interval; then he chased the doctors from the palace and went back to
+debauchery and to madness. Astrologers were sent for to enlist the
+sidereal powers in his behalf; one astrologer brought a book which he
+affirmed the Lord had sent to Adam by the hand of an angel; what good it
+had done to Adam appeareth not, but it certainly did not relieve the
+king. Then there were two Austin friars (!) who made a draught of
+powdered pearls and enlisted all the forces of sorcery in the king's
+behalf; but the king did not recover, and the friars were handed over to
+the Inquisition, condemned, and decapitated.
+
+Meanwhile any affection that Isabeau may have felt for her husband had
+passed away. She had found the Duke of Burgundy at last unendurably
+parsimonious; Louis d'Orleans was far more liberal with the money of the
+kingdom; besides, he was a handsome rake, whom all the women loved; it
+was inevitable that Isabeau should ally herself with the man who was
+willing not only to share her wanton pleasures but to squeeze out of the
+people the money required for them. The people, particularly the people
+of Paris, hated the Duke of Orleans because he was always imposing more
+taxes, and loved the Duke of Burgundy because he was politic enough to
+pretend to reduce taxes. It is therefore not surprising that we have so
+many accounts of the outrageous conduct of Isabeau de Baviere and Louis
+d'Orleans; for if the people are long-suffering, they yet do not forget.
+
+In order to meet some part of the expenses incurred by the prodigality
+of the court, Louis d'Orleans and the queen, in 1405, imposed a new tax.
+The prisons were soon crowded with poor wretches who could not pay the
+impost even by selling all their belongings, to the very straw of their
+beds. While the queen amused herself the people cursed. Not knowing what
+could become of the great sums raised and squandered by the worthless
+pair, the people said that Isabeau sent cartloads of gold into Bavaria
+and that Louis wasted it in magnificent structures on his domain at
+Couci and at Pierrefonds.
+
+The wild accusations of a maddened people, however, were not without
+excuse. This miserable wanton who was Queen of France left her husband,
+the poor, good-natured madman, and her children to the care of servants
+whose wages, in the midst of all this waste of the public money, she
+forgot to pay. The servants neglected both children and husband; the
+King of France was allowed to remain in filth and rags, covered with
+vermin that made repulsive sores upon him, while the little dauphin was
+but a half starved ragamuffin. One of the physicians discovered in what
+state Charles was: he had refused to bathe or to change his clothes for
+five months, and there was danger of his dying from sheer filth.
+Disguising some of his attendants in fearful costumes, the physician
+sent them into the mad king's den, where they terrified him into
+passivity and managed to bathe him, dress his sores, and change his
+clothes before the fit of terror passed away. When Charles next had a
+lucid interval he learned of the neglect of Isabeau, thanked those who
+had been more tender than his wife, and gave one lady, who had tried to
+care for the dauphin, a goblet of gold.
+
+The indignation of the people was great; all classes united in
+abhorrence of this shameless wife and mother. An Austin friar, bolder
+than the rest, preached a sermon before Isabeau and openly reproved her
+wantonness: "At your court reigns dame Venus, and her waiting maids are
+Lechery and Gormandise." The queen and her idle and vicious courtiers
+wished him punished for his effrontery; but Charles, hearing what he had
+said, declared that he liked such sermons, sent for the preacher,
+listened with interest and attention to his recital of the woes of the
+kingdom, projected reforms--and went mad again.
+
+While the fit of reform was on, Louis d'Orleans, terrified by a storm
+that had overtaken him and Isabeau in one of their pleasure-jaunts,
+vowed to repent and pay his debts. At these glad tidings over eight
+hundred creditors assembled; but the clouds rolled away, and with them
+went Louis's desire to be honest. He laughed at the creditors and gave
+secret orders to debase the coinage.
+
+The poor king was just sane enough to realize that things were going
+wrong; he appealed for help to the Duke of Burgundy. The vigorous and
+pitiless Jean Sans Peur, who had succeeded Philippe le Hardi in
+Burgundy, came down upon Paris, and Isabeau fled with Orleans to Melun,
+abandoning Charles, but planning to carry off next day the royal
+children and those of the Duke of Burgundy. Jean de Bourgogne, however,
+overtook the children and brought them back to Paris, where he now
+(August, 1405) established himself in the Louvre.
+
+So outrageous had been the spoliation under Isabeau and Louis that the
+Parisians welcomed Jean as a deliverer. The queen, under cover of a
+pretended right to appropriate goods for royal uses, had systematically
+not only taken the necessaries of life, provisions and the like, but had
+seized merchandise, jewels, money stored away by the owners, and
+furniture, plundering even the hospitals, and storing these stolen goods
+with the intention of selling them at auction. Greed was her
+predominating trait, and so we are not surprised to find her hatred of
+Jean Sans Peur increasing to the point of virulence when she was
+deprived of the opportunity of robbing unmolested. Unfortunately for
+her, Orleans was not a man of ability or energy sufficient to cope
+successfully with Jean de Bourgogne, and the struggle between the two
+dukes merely exhausted the resources of Orleans without seriously
+impairing those of his opponent. Isabeau, moreover, was not
+bloodthirsty; both her indolence and her interest impelled her to favor
+the peace between the two dukes which was brought about in the closing
+months of 1407.
+
+Louis was ill; in mere kindness his cousin of Burgundy visited him, and
+a reconciliation was effected. As soon as Louis was recovered from his
+indisposition the two, accompanied by the old Duke de Berri, who was
+anxious to promote peace, heard mass and took communion together,
+swearing fraternal love for each other. This was on Sunday, November 27,
+1407. On the next Wednesday evening Louis d' Orleans went as usual to
+sup with Isabeau at the Hotel Barbette, and was in particularly high
+spirits, attempting to divert the queen, who had been much distressed at
+the birth of a stillborn child, a love child, as people said. About
+eight o'clock in the evening, a message, apparently from the king,
+summoned Louis, and as he went in response to the summons, accompanied
+by but a few pages and servants, he was set upon and hacked to pieces in
+the streets of Paris by a gang of ruffians under one Raoul d'Octonville.
+
+The assassins made good their escape before people knew what had
+happened. When the death of the king's brother was discovered, great was
+the consternation; for all knew that such a crime had not been committed
+by an obscure scoundrel, and the question was asked, what great man had
+hired the assassins? In a few days Jean de Bourgogne, in a mood between
+terror and impudent bravado, confessed that he was guilty of the foul
+murder of the man to whom he had so recently sworn amity in the sight of
+God. Fearing that even his rank could not sufficiently shield him from
+punishment for this shedding of the blood royal, Jean fled from Paris to
+his own dominions.
+
+The dead man had been neither a good brother nor a good prince; with all
+of those facile graces which might have made him lovable to all men and
+did make him fascinating to most women he had combined no sterling
+qualities. He was not cruel; that is the only relatively good trait--and
+even that but negative--that we can set over against his reckless
+frivolity and licentiousness, his shameless infidelity and disregard of
+oaths and the most sacred obligations. He was not mourned in Paris,
+which was shocked but not grieved at his death; he was not sincerely
+mourned by the infamous queen whom he had led away from her duty to her
+pitiful, insane husband; but he was mourned by the woman whom he had
+most deeply wronged--his wife.
+
+This wife was the lovely Italian, Valentine Visconti, daughter of the
+Duke of Milan, who had married Louis in 1389 and was a sharer in the
+splendors of the gorgeous entry of Isabeau de Baviere into Paris. From
+the first she had just cause of complaint--and yet never complained--of
+the infidelity of a husband whom she loved with her whole heart, but
+whose love she could not retain. Froissart, who was no friend of hers,
+tells us a most curious and extraordinary story of one of Valentine's
+rivals, whom Louis had preferred to his wife as early as 1392. It
+appears that Louis d'Orleans had rashly confided the details of an amour
+to that Pierre de Craon whom we have mentioned before, and this knight
+revealed them to Valentine. The young duchess sent at once for the lady
+to whom Louis was devoting himself: "Wilt thou do me wrong with my lord,
+my husband?" The woman was abashed, and in her confusion confessed her
+guilt. Then said Valentine: "Thus it is: I am informed that my lord
+loveth you, and you him, and the matter is so far gone between you that
+in such a place and at such a time he promised you a thousand crowns of
+gold to be his paramour; howbeit, you did refuse it as then, wherein you
+did wisely, and therefore I pardon you; but I charge you on your life
+that you commune nor talk no more with him, but suffer him to pass and
+hearken no more to his commanding." From the treatment he received at
+the next meeting with his lady-love, Louis discovered that something was
+amiss, and she finally told him of the interview with Valentine. Louis
+then went home to his wife, "and showed her more token of love than ever
+he did before," finally wheedling her into telling him who had been the
+talebearer. The sequel we know: how Craon was driven from court, and
+returned to attempt the assassination of De Clisson.
+
+But if her husband did not love her, the king manifested a real and
+innocent affection for Valentine, his "dear sister," remembering her and
+asking for her when, in his madness, he knew no other. Yet even out of
+this there was to come evil for Valentine; for the Duchess of Burgundy,
+fearing the growth of the Orleans influence over the king, spread evil
+reports about the innocent relations between Charles and Valentine.
+Adding to these insinuations an accusation far more dangerous than that
+of adultery would have been in such a court, the Burgundians asserted
+that the king's insanity was produced and continued by the power of
+witchcraft; and this accusation, fastened upon Valentine, obtained such
+credit that her husband had to remove her from court to a sort of exile
+in his own dominions. We find even worse accusations credited by the
+unsympathetic Froissart, who reports that she had unwittingly poisoned
+her own child in an attempt to poison the dauphin, for "this lady was of
+high mind, envious and covetous of the delights and state of this world.
+Gladly she would have seen the Duke her husband attain to the crown of
+France, she had not cared how."
+
+Through good report and evil report the poor duchess had lived on,
+loving her husband and leading a life at least far more regular than
+that of the court, though she possessed the Italian love of the artistic
+and the beautiful and was very extravagant. The king, now often idiotic
+when he was not raving, had been turned completely against her. To amuse
+and distract him, and also to strengthen the Burgundian influence, the
+Duke of Burgundy provided him with a fair child as playmate and
+mistress. To the sway once held by Valentine over Charles there now
+succeeded Odette. She was little more than a child, but she became
+mistress as well as playfellow of the mad king. Of humble origin (_filia
+cujusdam mercatoris equorum_ daughter of a certain horse dealer), she
+wears in court history a name better than that she was born to, Odette
+de Champdivers; and the people, indulgent of the sin of the mad king,
+called her "la petite reine." She was happy, it seems, and kind to the
+king, amused him, was loved by him; and, more true to him than was quite
+pleasing to the Burgundians, did not play false to France in later years
+when Burgundy and England were leagued together, but is said to have
+used her influence over the king rather for France than for Burgundy. Of
+her we know little more than that she died about 1424, leaving a
+daughter whose legitimacy was recognized by Charles VII., and who was
+honorably married to a petty gentleman of Poitou.
+
+When the handsome, elegant, but unfaithful Louis was murdered, Valentine
+was at Blois with her children; the eldest was but sixteen, old enough
+to feel the loss, but not old enough to avenge it. But Valentine
+determined to avenge her husband; her grief gave her energy. She came at
+once to Paris with her youngest son and her daughter-in-law, that
+Isabelle de France who was already a widow from the death of Richard
+II., and now affianced to the young Duke d'Orleans. The king, sane at
+the time, was inexpressibly shocked by the murder of his brother, and
+was moved to tears when Valentine came before him to demand justice upon
+the murderer. He promised to act, and probably really meant what he
+said, but his mind was not capable of sustained effort. Jean de
+Bourgogne was making active preparations for a descent upon Paris with a
+retinue so formidable in numbers as to be an army; and Valentine retired
+to Blois, to bide her time. Jean, hardly opposed by Isabeau or any of
+the few who might be supposed either to exercise some authority or to
+sympathize with the Orleans faction, came to Paris, boldly hired lawyers
+and quibbling theologians to justify the "death which he had inflicted
+upon the person of the Duke d'Orleans," and made the poor madman who was
+king issue letters patent declaring that he, the king, "took out of his
+heart all displeasure against his very dear and well-beloved cousin of
+Burgundy for having put out of the world his brother of Orleans."
+
+Isabeau, who had shown herself utterly incapable of action in this
+crisis, remained at Melun until the arrogant and dangerous Duke of
+Burgundy had forced matters in this way and had been called away to
+repress a rebellion of Liege. Then she and her allies, with three
+thousand troops, entered Paris (August 26, 1408). Valentine came next
+day, and with her the young Charles d'Orleans, destined to become famous
+as one of France's sweetest poets, although kept a prisoner in England
+for twenty-five years. The king being once more incapacitated, it was
+decided that Isabeau should preside at the hearing of the formal
+complaint of the Duchess of Orleans. When the mourning widow and the
+youthful Duke of Orleans came before the council to demand a hearing,
+their plea was readily granted, for the menacing figure of Jean Sans
+Peur was no longer there to intimidate Isabeau and the friends of his
+victim. The next day, before the young Duke of Guyenne, who acted in the
+place of the king, the legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries employed by
+Valentine exerted themselves to exculpate Louis d'Orleans from the
+charges of sorcery and tyranny and to show that Jean de Bourgogne should
+be punished for the murder. The arguments of the Orleans advocates were
+far superior to the shallow, sophistical, utterly shameless harangues
+which had been delivered in defence of Jean. The legal advocate asked,
+on behalf of Valentine and her children, that Jean be compelled to come
+humbly to the Louvre and there to apologize to the king and to the widow
+and her children; that his houses in Paris be razed; that he be ordered
+to expend great sums in founding churches and convents, in expiation of
+his crime; and that he be banished beyond seas for twenty years, and,
+after his return, be not suffered to approach nearer than one hundred
+leagues to the queen and the Orleans princes.
+
+But Valentine, though she prevailed on the queen and the princes of the
+council to agree to summon Jean de Bourgogne to trial before the Court
+of Parliament, was impotent to prosecute her cause. For Jean, after a
+ferocious suppression of the rebellious citizens of Liege, came boldly
+back to Paris, was received as a victor and a friend by the people of
+Paris, and so overawed the other members of the council that the Orleans
+sympathizers dared not even dream of prosecuting the trial of this
+unabashed murderer.
+
+Valentine de Milan and her sons retired to Blois, fearing even further
+outrages from the triumphant Burgundians. Well might she now have
+justified the pathetic motto which she had assumed at her husband's
+tragic death: _Rien ne m'est plus, plus ne m'est rien,_--"There is
+nothing more for me, nothing matters more." This inscription, which she
+caused to be placed in the Franciscan Church at Blois, must have borne
+an added bitterness to her heart when she saw the selfish Isabeau making
+friends with the murderer of Louis. The wretched queen and the impotent
+members of the council were glad to make peace with Jean; they accepted
+his hospitality and cowered before him. Isabeau, caring nothing for the
+power of the crown, caring nothing for her husband or her children,
+caring indeed for but one thing, money, eagerly accepted that from the
+hands still red with the blood of the man she had loved.
+
+With her children about her, Valentine languished at Blois for a year.
+She had sought out one of Louis's natural sons, for whom she manifested
+affection and who, she used to say, was her own by rights, and more
+fitted to avenge his father than any of the other children. Valentine
+was in this a good judge, for the spirited, ardent lad whom she loved
+for his father's sake was none other than Jean, Comte de Dunois,
+afterward famous among the martial heroes of France as "Le Batard
+d'Orleans." Valentine died on December 4, 1408, and well might they say
+that she had died of a broken heart; for the one great emotion of her
+life had been the passionate devotion to one of the most despicable men
+that ever had a faithful wife--a devotion generous enough, indeed, to
+excuse even follies and infidelities.
+
+It was well for Valentine that death came when it did, for it saved her
+from still further sorrows and humiliations. Four months after her
+death, her unhappy sons were led to Chartres to go through the forms of
+a solemn reconciliation with their father's murderer. The duke expressed
+his contrition for "the fact of the murder committed upon Louis
+d'Orleans, howbeit this was done for the good of the king and the
+kingdom, as he was ready to prove, if desired." With such insulting
+phrases the sons were compelled to be satisfied, and they were forced to
+swear, with tears that they could not restrain, to harbor no ill
+feelings against their dear cousin of Burgundy, for whom the king, the
+queen, and the princes of the blood all interceded.
+
+In this shameful mockery of a peace, ratified in the great cathedral of
+Chartres, Isabeau de Baviere had acted for the Duke of Burgundy. She was
+soon to give still further proof of her heartlessness and ingratitude,
+when Jean de Bourgogne arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and executed Jean
+de Montaigu, superintendent of finances, who had been an old servant of
+the queen, who had even given her that splendid Hotel Barbette in which
+she had last supped with Louis d'Orleans, and who had drawn up the
+treaty of reconciliation between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans.
+Isabeau might have interceded in his behalf, and did make some move to
+do so; but a promise that her son should share in the confiscated wealth
+of Montaigu was enough to purchase her consent to the latter's death.
+
+Isabeau was at this time busying herself less and less about affairs of
+state; since she had leagued herself in secret with Jean de Bourgogne
+she had no cares but those attendant upon providing pleasures and
+amusements for herself. Her son, the dauphin, following in Isabeau's
+footsteps, was scandalizing all Paris by his orgies. At last, the people
+of Paris rose in one of their occasional sincere but futile attempts to
+reform the manners of a corrupt court. We shall not deal with the
+horrors of this outburst, one of the many little wavelets of popular
+indignation presaging, but presaging only to heedless revellers, the
+great tidal wave that was to envelop and bear down the just and the
+unjust alike some four hundred years later. The butchers and bakers and
+honest workingmen, led chiefly by a surgeon, Jean de Troyes, came by
+thousands to reform the morals of the dauphin. This miserable debauchee,
+as well as the rest of the court, trembled before them, and willingly
+conceded anything that could be asked. Even the poor mad king, whom the
+people loved and did not blame, had the white hood, emblem of the
+commune, placed upon his head, and smiled pitifully at his rough but
+well-meaning subjects. Forthwith, Isabeau equipped her head with a white
+hood, and so did all the court, the judges, and even the learned doctors
+of the University. But Isabeau's white hood was not wide enough to cover
+the scandalous horns of her headdress. Rising to the point of fury upon
+hearing that the dauphin, probably at the instigation of his mother, had
+been in communication with the Orleanist forces to induce them to march
+upon Paris, the Cabochiens, as the communists called themselves, in May,
+1413, invaded the palace itself and arrested Louis de Baviere, the
+queen's brother, and as many as fifteen of the ladies of her suite
+probably such as had made themselves peculiarly conspicuous and
+offensive by the extravagance and the indecency of their costumes.
+Isabeau wept, and pleaded vainly for a respite for her brother, then on
+the eve of his marriage; the stern moralists from the markets of Paris
+were inexorable and Louis went to jail unmarried, while Isabeau went to
+bed sick with childish fury.
+
+For a moment turning our attention from the queen, let us advert to the
+political conditions in France. From the time of the assassination of
+Louis d' Orleans there had been civil war, with rare and brief intervals
+of peace, between the partisans of Burgundy and those of Orleans, now
+led by Bernard d'Armagnac, whose daughter Charles d'Orleans had married
+after the early death of his first wife, Isabelle de France. While civil
+war in itself would have caused misery and ruin enough, its horrors were
+enhanced by the crafty policy of Henry IV. of England, who, when he was
+not able to intervene in person, responded to the solicitations of first
+one party and then the other, and thus caused Armagnacs and Bourguignons
+to exhaust themselves in fruitless strife. It was the craft of Henry IV.
+and the folly of France that prepared the way for Agincourt, that
+crushing victory of the great Henry V., who in the presence of the
+overwhelming French army proclaimed, in Shakespeare's paraphrase of his
+words:
+
+                                         "We are enow
+        To do our country loss; and if to live,
+        The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
+        God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more!"
+
+The event justified King Harry's boastful confidence: the chivalry of
+France found itself discredited, dead, or in captivity. And yet, even in
+the hour of France's distress, the indolent Isabeau could hardly be
+prevailed upon to take any action in behalf of her son, the dauphin,
+Louis de Guienne who, in fact, lived but a little over two months after
+Agincourt, and was succeeded by Jean de Touraine. In two years more
+(1417) Jean de Touraine was dead, poisoned, it was said, by Bernard
+d'Armagnac; the new dauphin, Charles, was a boy of but fourteen years.
+
+This Charles, one of the most uncomfortably cold and contemptible
+personages in history, had been reared by the queen and the Armagnac
+party with sentiments of the bitterest hatred against the Burgundians.
+Determined to win complete control of Charles, Bernard d'Armagnac sought
+to discredit Isabeau with her son and with the king. There was no
+difficulty in finding pretexts, for the sober-minded Juvenal des Ursins
+tells us that in the chateau of Vincennes, whither Isabeau had retired
+to revel more at ease, "many shameful things were done" by the queen and
+her troop of rakes and gaudily dressed ladies; but indecency in dress
+was not the only scandal that Bernard revealed to the king, who was at
+the time in better mental condition than for years.
+
+As he rode back from the chateau one evening the king met Loys de
+Boisbourdon, whom he knew to be one of Isabeau's associates. Suddenly
+suspicious and resolved to know the whole truth, Charles had him
+arrested and put to the question (_i.e._, tortured). Such horrors were
+revealed by this unlucky sharer of the queen's pleasures that Charles
+deemed them not fit for further circulation, and accordingly Loys de
+Boisbourdon carried his secrets with him into a sack, which was
+inscribed: _Laissez passer la justice du roi_, "Make way for the justice
+of the king," and the waters of the Seine covered the sack and the
+sinner. The mad king's justice, of which we read with a certain joyful
+sympathy, was not ended, for he sent the queen and the duchess of
+Bavaria to Blois, and later to Tours, where they were compelled to live
+under surveillance and in salutary simplicity. The dauphin seized some
+moneys belonging to Isabeau, who henceforth cherished the most
+unrelenting hatred for her own son, accusing him of being responsible
+for her exile. The real grief to her, we may feel sure, was the loss of
+her money.
+
+From this time, we find Isabeau intriguing with the Duke of Burgundy. As
+Jean was marching upon Paris he came into the neighborhood of Tours. The
+pious Isabeau was suddenly filled with a desire to hear mass at a
+particular convent some distance outside the walls. While she was
+engaged in her devotions the troops of Burgundy, in ambush, surrounded
+the convent and "captured" Isabeau and her guardians. The queen and her
+ally, styling themselves governors of France, established a parliament
+at Amiens, sent out decrees by authority of the "council of the queen
+and the duke," and fought the dauphin on paper and in the field. When in
+June, 1418, the Parisians, provoked beyond endurance by the exactions
+and the arrogance of the Armagnac nobles, massacred every Armagnac that
+they could find, Isabeau stood too much in awe of these fierce men of
+the common people to enter Paris. Had she not seen their violence
+before, merely because she lived in luxury while they starved? She
+waited for the arrival of Jean de Bourgogne, and the two entered Paris
+together on July 14th. The dauphin, the sole hope of France, fled before
+the armies of his mother.
+
+As early as May, 1419, the queen had been in negotiation with the
+English to disinherit her son, when the sudden death of Jean Sans Peur,
+who was assassinated at a conference with the dauphin in September,
+1419, interrupted her plans; but she was determined at all hazards not
+to fall into the hands of her son. She wrote a letter of condolence to
+the widowed Duchess of Burgundy, and promised the new duke, Philippe le
+Bon, to assist him in punishing the dauphin. Philippe, like all this
+race of Burgundian dukes, was a man of action, a man of strong
+character, slightly more scrupulous than his father, and yet not
+entirely without inclination to sacrifice honor to policy. It is not to
+be wondered at that, justly indignant at the treacherous murder of his
+father, he should have sacrificed the interests of France to satisfy his
+resentment against the dauphin.
+
+The queen, the Duke of Burgundy, and the unhappy king, a mere tool in
+their hands, treated at once with Henry V. It was stipulated in the
+preliminaries that Henry should aid them and be aided by them in war
+upon the dauphin. The selfish mother who thus enlisted even foreigners
+in her war against her son was capable of yet worse things. It was
+agreed that Henry should marry Catherine de France, the youngest
+daughter of Isabeau, and should at once receive control of the entire
+kingdom, in consideration of the incapacity of Charles VI.
+
+Isabeau de Baviere was merely a wanton, an idle, vain, shallow-hearted
+seeker after pleasure, utterly incapable of taking seriously her role as
+Queen of France. With such love as her heart was capable of feeling, she
+loved Catherine, while her mean nature could never forgive the son who
+was the heir of France. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find her
+signing and causing the king to sign a treaty which violated every
+principle of patriotism and honor. By the treaty signed at Troyes on May
+21, 1420, Charles, Duke of Touraine, Dauphin of France, was
+disinherited; the very principles of the Salic law were set at naught;
+and the heritage of Charles was bestowed, not even upon one of his elder
+sisters, but upon that Catherine of France, the youngest child, now
+Queen of England, and, in failure of heirs of her body, upon her
+husband, Henry V. of England. The two nations were to be merged, each
+retaining its distinctive laws, but both were to be under the rule of
+English sovereigns, and Henry was to aid in restoring peace and in
+destroying "the rebels" under Charles, "called the Dauphin." One of the
+bribes paid to Isabeau for selling the kingdom of her son was a pension;
+for we find an ordinance of Henry, "heir and regent of France," granting
+to the queen the sum of two thousand francs per month.
+
+Isabeau's enjoyment of her pension was not destined to be of long
+continuance. The brilliant Henry V. died on August 31, 1422; and less
+than two months later died Charles VI., _le bien aime_. During thirty of
+the forty-two years of his reign he had been incapacitated by madness or
+by idiocy, and in the intervals France had been worse misgoverned than
+ever before in her history; so that, with wars foreign and domestic and
+with the shameless extravagance of the court, the kingdom had been
+reduced to a deplorable state, scores dying in the streets of Paris of
+sheer hunger while the English king was spending his first triumphant
+winter in that city. For all these evils and miseries the people placed
+the blame where, in good truth, it belonged, on the queen and the royal
+princes. For the mad king there was nothing but a compassionate love, a
+tender sympathy; the people pitied this kindly unfortunate, abandoned by
+his wife, used as a tool by first one set of princes and then another.
+
+At the funeral of Charles VI. not a single prince of France was present;
+the English Bedford conducted the whole sad affair. "As the body of the
+King was put in the sepulchre beside his predecessors, the heralds broke
+their rods and cast them into the grave... And then the Berri
+king-at-arms, accompanied by several heralds and pursuivants, cried out
+over the grave: 'May God have mercy upon the very noble and very
+excellent Prince Charles, sixth of the name, our lawful and sovereign
+lord!' And after this the aforesaid king-at-arms cried out: 'May God
+grant long life and prosperity to Henry, by the grace of God King of
+France and of England, our sovereign lord!' And then the heralds raised
+aloft their truncheons with the fleur-de-lis, crying: _'Vive le roi!
+Vive le roi!'_ And some of those present answered _Noel_ (the ancient
+salutation to the King); but there were some who wept."
+
+Thus the wretched Isabeau's work was, it seemed, complete, her son being
+a fugitive before the arms of the foreigner, while her infant grandson
+was King of France. From this time she disappears completely from the
+scene of action, drawing her meagre pension from the hands of the
+English, who treated her with deserved contempt, and cursed by all
+France for the memory of her evil deeds. We catch but a fleeting glimpse
+of her, living in obscurity at the royal palace of Saint-Pol. When on
+December 2, 1431, the young King Henry VI. made his solemn entry into
+his capital of Paris, the royal procession passed by the windows of the
+palace, and the boy king, looking up, saw an old woman in faded finery,
+surrounded by a bevy of women attendants. They, told him it was his
+grand-mother, the frivolous and once beautiful Isabeau de Baviere, and
+he doffed his cap, while Isabeau bowed to him and turned aside to weep.
+Did she weep from sincere contrition, or merely from regret of the
+departed luxury and extravagance of her life? She was not to live many
+years longer; but it was long enough to know that France had survived
+even her treachery and that her son was at peace with the Duke of
+Burgundy. So far from rejoicing, it is said that she died of regret that
+the treaty of Troyes had come to naught, her death occurring on
+September 24, 1435. She died with outward show of piety, and was buried
+as meanly, says a contemporary, as if she had been a humble
+_bourgeoise_, but four persons being present at the graveside.
+
+The very portraits of Isabeau de Baviere, and of other women of her
+court, suggest sensuality. They are fat, and of the earth, earthy,
+suggesting lives led in indolence and the pursuit of pleasures not of
+the highest. As Michelet says, "Obesity is a characteristic of the
+figures of this sensual epoch. See the statues at Saint Denys; those of
+the fourteenth century are clearly portraits. See, in particular, the
+statue of the Duke de Berri in the subterranean chapel of Bourges, with
+the ignoble fat dog lying at his feet." As was the epoch, so was the
+queen; she was not actively bad, except where interference with her
+pleasures was threatened; she was merely a vain and utterly incapable
+woman of low tastes and cold heart who was called upon to be Queen of
+France in the most disastrous period of the history of that land. We
+need not think her a second Fredegonde, as some historians have tried to
+represent her; for her follies and her vices were such as to cause
+abhorrence by their puerility or their bestiality rather than to stir
+the deeper feelings of fear and hate excited by the greater among the
+bad women of history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CHRISTINE DE PISAN
+
+                "SEULETE suy et seulete veuil estre,
+                Seulete m'a mon doulz ami laissiee,
+                Seulete suy sans compagnon ne maistre,
+                Seulete suy dolente et courrouciee,
+                Seulete suy en langueur mesaisiee,
+                Seulete suy plus que nulle esgaree,
+                Seulete suy sans amis demouree."
+
+       (Alone am I in the world, and alone would I remain,
+       Alone has my dear love left me,
+       Alone am I, a poor lone woman, without companion or master,
+       Alone am I, stricken with sorrow and anguish of mind,
+       Alone am I, and ill at ease,
+       Alone am I, more lonely than one who has lost her way,
+       Alone have I been left without friends.)
+
+This complaint of one who has lost her lover, or been betrayed and
+forsaken by him, might well have been the lament of France, betrayed by
+Isabeau de Baviere and left naked to her enemies. But the author of the
+lament, though one ready enough to find matter for her pen in the
+condition of her adopted country, had no thought of France in this case;
+for the little _ballade_ was composed by Christine de Pisan with no
+other reference than to her own life.
+
+The age of the mad king and the bad queen would not have been, one would
+think, favorable to the advancement of literature; and yet some of the
+best literature of medieval France was composed while Isabeau de Baviere
+was still alive. We shall allude at this time to but two writers,
+Froissart, of whom we have already said something, and Christine de
+Pisan, both of whom were writing between 1380 and 1400. Christine, the
+first professional authoress in France of whose life we have record, is
+well worthy of study both as an authoress and as a woman.
+
+The fourteenth century was the heyday of the astrologer as it was of the
+witch, and the wise Charles V., "le Salomon de la France," was not alone
+in his superstition when he placed his reliance upon the predictions of
+the learned doctor, Thomas of Pisa, whom he had summoned from Italy to
+be court astrologer. We are told that the nobles and great ones of the
+earth at that time "dared do nothing new without the commands of
+astrology; they dared neither build castles, nor churches, nor begin
+war, nor even so much as put on a new robe, undertake a journey, nor go
+out of their houses without the consent of the stars." Whether or not
+this be somewhat of an exaggeration, there is no question that Thomas de
+Pisan occupied, at the court of Charles V., a position not only
+lucrative but dignified. Established in the Louvre itself, the Italian
+scholar sent for his wife and daughter to make their home in France. The
+daughter, then (1368) but five years of age, was already a precocious
+little lady, and was presented to the king when she arrived in France.
+Charles was pleased with the graces of the child, and made her his
+especial protegee, promising that she should have as good an education
+and place at his court as any _demoiselle_ of noble birth. Charles was
+himself a scholar and capable of appreciating the nobility of
+intelligence; and in this case he had not judged amiss.
+
+It is from the works of Christine herself--_La Vision de Christine_, in
+prose, _La Mutation de Fortune_, and _Le Chemin de Long Estude_,--in
+verse that we learn most of her story, which was happy and uneventful up
+to her fourteenth year. At this time she had already acquired, under her
+father's careful tuition, a remarkable familiarity with the classic
+authors of Rome, and could turn off as neat Latin verses as any boy in
+the schools, and could also write French verse. It was most fortunate
+for her that her father, "not thinking girls any more unfit for learning
+than boys," allowed her to "glean some straws of learning." Before she
+was fifteen Christine was married to a notary, Etienne Castel, a Picard
+gentleman of good birth and excellent character, whom she loved
+tenderly.
+
+The prosperity of her family was first threatened in 1380, when her good
+patron King Charles died. Then her father, who had lavishly expended a
+large part of the handsome stipend he received as astrologer, found
+himself suddenly reduced almost to poverty, and he did not long survive
+his royal patron. The earnings of her husband not being sufficient to
+maintain the family, Christine cast about for a means to put to use the
+education she had received, and had already begun, by some small works,
+her career as an authoress, when the sudden death of her husband,
+carried off by the plague in 1389, left her alone and without resources,
+and under the necessity of providing some sort of support for her mother
+and her three children.
+
+She never ceased to mourn for her husband, and the pages of her works
+are filled with poems which, like the little _ballade_ that heads this
+chapter, hold tender allusion to her loss. Though to modern ears the
+perpetual repetition of this strain of mourning grows monotonous, some
+of the sweetest of her poems are those inspired by this sentiment,
+expressed with a directness and a simplicity that must appeal to any
+lover of truth and poetry. "He loved me," she sings, "and 'twas right
+that he should, for I had come to him as a girl-bride; we two had made
+such wise provision in all our love that our two hearts were moved in
+all things, whether of joy or of sorrow, by a common wish, more united
+in love than the hearts of brother and sister."
+
+She too might have wished to die, she says, in order to follow the loved
+one, but that there were the children and the mother whom she alone
+could care for. The energy of her character at last saved the fortunes
+of her family. Her first task, the saving of some last remnants of the
+property of her father and her husband, was rendered more difficult by
+the almost interminable delays of the courts and the dishonesty of
+advocates and opponents who had more influence with the "blind goddess"
+than the daughter of the old astrologer. She herself gives an
+interesting picture of her difficulties, all bravely met for the sake of
+her children, and in time overcome. Not the least of her worries was the
+determination to conceal from her friends the desperate state of her
+fortunes; she was too proud to appear poor: "There is no sorrow equal to
+this, and no one who has not experienced it can know what it means....
+Under a furred mantle and a cloak of scarlet, well saved, but not often
+renewed, there was many a shiver, and in a bed properly appointed with
+all things of comfort, many a sleepless night. But our meal was always a
+simple one, as befits a widow."
+
+But from the more sordid cares, the covering of her poverty under
+threadbare finery that did not keep out the cold, and the vulgar
+loungers who would ogle her and leer at her as she went about the
+courts, there was a refuge in the pursuits which were to earn her bread.
+At first Christine sang of her lost husband, and the grace and
+earnestness of these poems pleased the fashionable public of the day.
+Her style was the result of long and careful preparation, and her mind
+almost unconsciously reflected the things which she had read and admired
+in classic literature; and thus she transmitted to her readers much
+information, not in itself new or original, but strange to them, and
+therefore interesting. Some of the great personages of the court still
+remembered the little Italian protegee of Charles V., and asked her to
+write for them poems of love, in less lugubrious vein. We have seen that
+the troubadours thought it almost a truism: "Without love, no poesy,"
+for love was their only theme; but here we find a woman who frankly
+admits that she has loved and loves no more, and who yet undertakes to
+write love poems for a price, and does write some exquisite ones. Poetry
+made to order can never seem spontaneous after we know that the poet has
+found inspiration not at the shrine of Phoebus but at that of Plutus;
+but many of the poetic masterpieces have been composed under stress of
+dire poverty, of which we are fortunately not always aware when reading
+them. And so, among the six or seven score little _ballades_ and _jeux_
+which in Christine's works are marked _a vendre_--for sale--there are
+many that we could read with more sincere pleasure if we did not doubt
+the genuineness of the sentiment expressed. These little poems, many of
+them really graceful and charming playthings of a moment, lose so much
+in translation that I shall not attempt to render into English their
+ephemeral charm. The French of five hundred years ago is not "Frenshe of
+Paris" to most of us: rather is it of the school of "Stratford atte
+Bow," or of some other school we have never attended, and therefore I
+have chosen to give, with some changes in orthography, one of the
+simplest of Christine's _jeux a vendre_. It is a lover's song in praise
+of his lady beautiful and good:
+
+        "Je vous vens la rose de mai?
+        Oncques en ma vie n'aimai
+        Autant dame ne damoiselle
+        Que je fais vous, gente femelle,
+        Si me retenez a ami,
+        Car tout avez le coeur de mi (moi).
+        ..........................................
+        Je vous vens l'oiselet en gage?
+        Si vous etes faulx, c'est dommage,
+        Car vous etes et belle et doulx,
+        Si n'ayez telle tache en vous,
+        Et digne serez d'etre aimee,
+        Belle et bonne et bien renommee."
+
+In other poems written for her courtly admirers Christine does not
+hesitate to voice sentiments quite out of keeping with the manners of
+her patrons. It is thus that she says: "If true honor is to be
+reapportioned, many do I know who will have but a little share in it,
+despite their thinking that they have all that wealth, beauty, noble
+birth, and fine clothes can give, and that therefore they are very
+princes. But however noble he be in outward show, no man is noble who
+lends himself to evil deeds or evil words. Thus some there are in whose
+boasting there is not one word of truth, who will tell you that the
+fairest ladies in the land have honored them with love. Good Lord! what
+gentility! How ill it becomes a noble man to lie and tell false tales of
+women! Such fellows are but villains, pure and simple; and should there
+be a redistribution of honors, theirs should be cut down."
+
+Not infrequently, alas, the pride of learning mars her verse; it is
+overloaded with pedantic allusions, stiff with learning, and too
+manifestly the product of a learned head rather than of an overflowing
+heart. Where these faults appear less, or not at all, is in the poems
+inspired by genuine feeling for her loved ones; there the real heart of
+the woman, bravely struggling to bear up and smile before the world, is
+laid bare to us in sudden glimpses of unpremeditated poetry. It is an
+old theme, but one of pathos ever fresh, that we find in the following
+lines:
+
+        "Je chante par couverture (_i. e._, contenance),
+        Mais mieux pleurassent mes oeil (yeux),
+        Ne nul ne sait le travail
+        Que mon pauvre coeur endure.
+        Pour ce (je) muce (cache) ma douleur
+        Qu'en nul je ne vois pitie.
+        Plus on a cause de pleur (pleurer),
+        Moins on trouve d'amitie.
+        Pour ce plainte ne murmure
+        Ne fais de mon piteux deuil.
+        Aincois (plutot) (je) ris quand pleurer veuil (veux),
+        Et sans rime et sans mesure
+        Je chante par couverture."
+
+It is, you see, the old _motif_, in melodramatic pathos that of the
+harlequin Dorkins, who must play his part in the pantomime even though
+his child lie dying, in tragedy that of Lady Macbeth, who must play the
+queen by day and suffer the torments of the murderess at night. It is
+not the novelty but the universality and truth of the idea or sentiment
+that makes Christine's verses rank as poetry.
+
+But love songs alone could not support a family of five; the Church, so
+often the refuge of forlorn women, might have offered Christine a
+refuge, but not support for those dependent on her, since she had not
+sufficient influence to assure herself of any office of dignity and
+emolument in the convents of the proud and wealthy. Her pen must be her
+resource; and thus Christine de Pisan became not merely an authoress,
+but the first authoress to support herself by her pen. For some of her
+shorter poems she received not inconsiderable sums; but longer works,
+works of more permanent value must be undertaken, and Christine
+valiantly set to work.
+
+Her first task was to secure a patron, for only some great lord could
+afford to pay sums sufficient to enable her to live: there was no eager
+public of thousands, educated by the printing press to expect, to
+welcome, to demand fresh intellectual food. One of her patrons was the
+great Duke of Burgundy, Philippe le Hardi, to whom she dedicated a very
+long and partly autobiographical poem called _La Mutation de Fortune_.
+She tells her story with rather too much display of the fact that she
+knows all the famous apologues and anecdotes that might apply to her
+case; still, it is an earnest and in some ways interesting account of
+how she had been compelled to take up a profession not then regarded as
+befitting a woman how,--as she says, she had turned herself "from woman
+to man." She read this work to Philippe de Bourgogne in that same palace
+where she had once been a familiar inmate, where she had played as a
+child, where she had learned to know the famous men through whose aid
+Charles V. had well-nigh regenerated France. It is not surprising that
+Philippe de Bourgogne should think of her as specially fitted to
+undertake a task requiring intimate knowledge of that king and his time.
+The duke, sending for her one day as she sat in the midst of a pile of
+books, pen in hand, asked her to undertake the writing of a life of his
+great brother.
+
+With ready devotion she set about writing the life of Charles V., of the
+king who, "when I was a child, gave me my bread." In due time her book,
+_Le Livre des faits et bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V._, was completed;
+but he for whom she had written it had died in 1404, before half was
+done. The loss of her generous friend and protector was a serious blow
+to the poetess. Her mother had also died; while Christine must plod
+wearily on, though "her heart was filled with joy when she remembered
+that the day was not very far off when she herself would go to join the
+loved ones."
+
+The history of Charles V. is a work of which one hardly knows what to
+say. As history, it is manifestly a failure, for Christine had either no
+wish or no opportunity to present facts in a narrative at once accurate,
+detailed, and clear; her work lacks both the accuracy and the breadth of
+view of genuine history; it is rather, as one critic remarks, an
+_eloge_, a eulogy upon Charles V.--which, indeed, had been what Philippe
+desired. The book is in prose, and though the style lacks the clearness
+and vividness to which we are accustomed in such men of genius as
+Villehardouin, Joinville, and her own contemporary, Froissart, we must
+remember that these men had reached the high-water mark of French style,
+not to be equalled, in sober truth, till the Renaissance, the "New
+Birth," had regenerated the fallen life and literature of Europe. As
+prose of the early fifteenth century, Christine's work is better than
+any other then written, except that of Froissart; and not a little of
+his charm comes less from the style than from the matters of which he
+chose to write. There is in Christine's book little of the gorgeousness
+of chivalry: was not the king in whose praise she wrote a king who won
+his battles at the council table, while Du Guesclin, upon the field of
+battle, gave the hard knocks which his sovereign, weak and sickly, could
+neither give nor take? Where Christine does succeed is in her portraits
+of the king and his courtiers, whose characters she knew perfectly and
+whose good and bad traits she does not scruple to depict with such even
+justice as she may. To quote the words of one of her most recent
+critics, who does not fail to call attention to the awkward Latinisms of
+her diction and the lopsided Ciceronian periods in her attempts at
+elevation or eloquence: "No one has made us feel more distinctly the
+winning grace of the Duke d'Orleans, brother of Charles VI., nor has any
+one better depicted the physical aspect of Charles V.; clearly do we see
+the long face, the broad forehead, the prominent eyes, and the thin
+lips; the beard is very thick, the cheekbones high and prominent, the
+skin brown and pale, the whole countenance thin to emaciation; it is the
+face of an ascetic, tempered by the gentleness of the expression and
+something staid and thoughtful in the whole look. Nor is there mere
+banality and commonplace in the moral portrait of the king; if she
+praises his chevalerie (chivalry), she does not conceal the fact that,
+weak and sickly, his hand never drew the sword from the day of his
+accession to the day of his death."
+
+The mere list of Christine's works would fill much space, and in the end
+we should not be much edified thereby; for she was a voluminous writer,
+really a hack writer, and therefore turned out a huge pile of
+ill-considered stuff, in prose and in verse, which she well knew would
+win no fame for her it were sufficient could it but win bread for her
+children! Much of this work is mere paraphrase of Latin authors of great
+repute and much read in the Middle Ages, though now all but forgotten:
+the moral Seneca, the martial Vegetius and Frontinus, Valerius Maximus,
+and honest Plutarch (whom critics praise, and only unfortunate boys
+read). It is from these and the like of these that she gleaned much of
+such works as _L'Epitre d'Othea a Hector_, on the training of a prince;
+_Le Chemin de Long Estude_, a long moral poem (1402); _Le Livre de
+Prudence; Le Livre des Faits d'armes et de chevalerie; Le Livre de
+Police_ (political economy). With such compilations, doubtless both
+useful and interesting when there were fewer books of general
+information, encyclopedias and the like, Christine filled many a
+manuscript, and much of her work still remains in manuscript, though the
+_Societe des anciens textes francais_ is slowly reprinting her works,
+which will fill four large volumes with verse alone and overflow into
+several more with prose.
+
+With the great mass of the work left by Christine de Pisan we shall not
+even attempt to deal; but the presentation of one of her favorite
+enthusiasms will prove, we hope, of some interest. Though forced to earn
+her own bread and so to compete with men, Christine never forgot that
+she was a woman; neither in conduct nor in her writings did she ever so
+behave or so write as to forfeit that dearest of her privileges as a
+woman, the respect of men. Not only did she respect herself, but she was
+determined that men should respect her, and moreover that they should
+not with impunity malign woman. We have shown in a previous chapter how
+outrageous was the literary attitude toward the fair sex, whom the
+satirists, big and little, were never tired of belaboring as the authors
+of all the evil in the world. Marriage and love are, of course, fertile
+subjects of satiric humor, as when the groom is told, in the _sermon
+joyeux_ on the _Maux de mariage_ (Misfortunes of Marriage), that, from
+the very wedding day: "all his money will take wings and fly away, but
+his wife will stay," and stay, and stay, until he is dead and buried,
+and then, as the church bell tolls his knell his dear wife will be
+thinking of how she can manage to marry his servant. "Verily," says
+another, speaking of the pilgrimage of marriage, "'tis a road to which
+there is no end till the weaker of the two be dead." It was this
+attitude against which Christine entered a vigorous protest, and she got
+into a little war of words with two of her contemporaries.
+
+In several of the minor poems noted above there are allusions to the
+wrong of boastfulness, mendacity, and evil speaking about women; but in
+the _Epitre au Dieu d'Amour_ (properly the Epistle _of_, not _to_, the
+God of Love), she brings upon the scene Love himself, who complains of
+and ridicules tale-telling and blabbing gallants, always ready to
+recount imaginary conquests of any woman whose name is mentioned. What
+honor is there, she asks, in deceiving a woman? This was in May, 1399,
+and it was not many years before she began to assault the chief citadel
+of the scorners of womanhood, the great _Roman de la Rose_. Her _Dit de
+la Rose_ is dated on a day of all others most propitious to lovers,
+Saint Valentine's day, in the year 1402. Her poem contains the graceful
+conception of an order of chivalry whose symbol shall be the rose (so
+long fraught with evil associations through the influence of ungenerous
+clerks), and the chief of the vows exacted of the good knights shall be,
+never to be licentious, in word or in deed, with regard to women. The
+gauntlet thus thrown down before the admirers of the satirist one might
+almost say misogynist Jean de Meung, was not long in finding those
+willing to take it up. Two secretaries of Charles VI., Jean de Montreuil
+and Gonthier Col, assumed the defence of the _Roman de la Rose_, and
+various letters, sometimes couched in terms of good-humored raillery,
+sometimes sly and cutting, were exchanged between them and Christine.
+Which side, considered merely as debaters, really had the better of the
+literary duel we need not care; for the common-sense and the moral point
+of view was certainly not that which justified general condemnation of
+woman as an inferior and wicked creature, and also justified the
+degradation of the noblest emotions to mere sensuality. Christine,
+however, thought that she had made out such a good case for maligned
+femininity that she collected her letters and the answers, and dedicated
+the whole correspondence to Isabeau de Baviere. It would be a pleasant
+relief to the gaudy colors in the picture of that unworthy queen if we
+could feel that she appreciated the delicate compliment thus paid her,
+or in any way encouraged the worthy defender of her sex.
+
+This collection of prose and verse was not the only plea Christine made
+for women. She composed two other works, in prose, whose dominant notion
+is the rehabilitation of honest womanhood. The first of these, called
+_La Cite des Dames_, is one of those compilations descending in the main
+from Boccaccio's Latin work, _De Claris Mulieribus_, "Concerning Famous
+Women," of which Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_ and Tennyson's _Dream
+of Fair Women_ are the greatest examples: the present work itself,
+indeed, is a record of this nature. But that which Chaucer and Tennyson
+treat poetically, imaginatively, with all the art of minds supremely
+artistic, Christine treats in a rather matter-of-fact way; that is, she
+is concerned to tell such anecdotes of famous women as will support her
+thesis of the essential nobility of the feminine character. In this way
+she has accumulated a considerable amount of evidence showing the
+patience, the devotion, the fidelity, the heroism of which women are
+capable under all circumstances of life. The heroines of antiquity are
+not alone in eliciting Christine's praises; for she devotes some
+attention to the patterns of virtue in her own day, to princesses, and
+to simple bourgeoises, and to one Anastasia, who is of peculiar interest
+to us because she was a fine illuminator, and may have been the artist
+who executed the beautiful illuminations in the manuscripts of
+Christine's own works.
+
+The second of the prose works in behalf of women is the _Livre des Trois
+Vertus_, or _Tresor de la Cite des Dames_, a book of sage counsel to
+women of all classes and full of information most valuable for the
+historian of manners. It is from this book that one receives the best
+impression of the fine moral character and catholicity of view of this
+woman living a life of hardship and struggle in the dark days of the mad
+king. She is no prude, but simple and charitable in her conception of
+the problems of life. Though herself a literary woman, she does not
+place too great stress upon learning for her sex: "This woman in love
+with scholarship intends, to be sure, that woman should acquire
+learning; but it must be for the purpose of developing her intelligence,
+of raising her heart to higher things, not of widening her field of
+ambitions, dethroning man and reigning in his stead."
+
+The prodigious activity of this authoress can best be appreciated by
+reference to her own statement that, by the year 1405, she had "produced
+fifteen works of importance, without counting other special little
+_ditties_, which together fill about seventy sheets of large size." The
+chief part of her work was already done; for the disturbed condition of
+the kingdom after the murder of Louis d'Orleans (1407) interrupted her
+labors. She had thoroughly naturalized herself in her adopted country,
+and this fervent patriot, who grieved that she was helpless to save
+France, must have suffered intensely during the dark years that
+followed. In 1410, she wrote a _Lamentation_ upon the horrors of civil
+war, and two years later, after the overthrow of the communist
+government of Paris, the Cabochiens, she wrote a _Livre de la Paix_,
+full of harsh but just criticisms upon those butchers and bakers who
+would reform the whole world if first allowed to destroy it. Then came
+the greater sorrows of Agincourt and the English conquest. Christine
+fled from Paris, no longer the home of those princes who had favored
+her, and found refuge in a convent, probably the convent at Poissy to
+which her daughter had already retired. It was the breaking up of her
+little family, her two sons going back to Italy to seek a more favorable
+field for their peaceful talents, and the mother remaining in seclusion
+for eleven years.
+
+It was probably not long before her death, of which we do not know the
+precise date, that the good lady heard in her cloister the glad news of
+the coming of the Maid of Orleans and of the consecration of the king at
+Rheims. All her love for her dear land of France welled up in her heart,
+and in gladness and wonder she sang the _Dittie de Jeanne d'Arc_, the
+praise of this "girl of sixteen years... before whom enemies fly, not
+one dare stand.... Oh! what honor to our sex! our sex, that God loves,
+it would seem." We cannot better conclude this account of a pure and
+noble woman--of one who loved her husband, her children and her country,
+and who, above all, preserved respect for herself and for her womanhood
+in an evil age--than in the words of her triumphant song of joy which
+proclaims that France is saved, and that it is a woman who saves France:
+
+        "Chose est bien digne de memoire
+        Que Dieu par une vierge tendre
+        Sur France si grand' grace estendre.
+        Tu Johanne, de bonne heure nee,
+        Benoist (Beni) soit (le) Ciel qui te crea,
+        Par miracle fut (elle) envoyee
+        Au roi pour sa provision;
+        Son fait n'est pas illusion,
+        Car bien a ete eprouvee....
+        Par conseil en conclusion
+        A l'effet la chose est prouvee,
+        Et sa belle vie, par (ma) foi,
+        Par quoi (laquelle) on ajoute plus (de) foi
+        A son fait, quoi qu'elle fasse,
+        Toujours en Dieu devant la face....
+        Hee! quel honneur au feminin
+        Sexe! que Dieu l'aime, il appert!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE
+
+_Cettelle ne vient pas de la terre; elle est envoyee du ciel._ Thus it
+is that a contemporary, a great politician and satirist, Alain Chartier,
+expresses his convictions regarding the Maid of Orleans. To Christine de
+Pisan, too, she seemed, as we have seen, a messenger from God. It was a
+time when all good patriots wept, when the fair land of France was a
+prey to the spoiler, when Armagnac, Bourguignon, and hated Saxon roamed
+at will over the land and laid it waste. In one of Alain Chartier's
+political satires, _Le Quadriloge invectif_, the three estates of the
+realm nobles, clergy, commons are in turn appealed to by La France, to
+"have pity of their common mother." The commons, or _Peuple_, replies:
+"It is the labor of my hands that feeds and clothes these cowardly
+loafers, and they oppress me with famine and the sword.... They live
+upon me, and I am slowly dying under them.... The banners of the host
+are raised, they say, against our enemies, but no deeds are done except
+against me." It was a complaint but too true, as was that in Chartier's
+_Livre de I'Esperance_: "The nights are too short for the shameless
+pleasures (of the gentlemen at court), and the days too short for
+sleeping.... It would seem that noble estate means no more than license
+to do wrong and yet go unpunished."
+
+In this disregard of the moral law as well as of patriotic duties the
+dauphin himself led the way. One hardly knows what verdict to pass upon
+this man, for his character was a blend of qualities that might have
+made greatness and that yet resulted in nothing but meanness, littleness
+of soul, and ingratitude. It is not the acid meanness of Louis XI, his
+son, for that had a purpose; what in Louis XI was true vinegar, sharp
+and biting, had not yet gone through the full process of fermentation in
+Charles VII. and was simply a fluid evil to the taste, with no useful
+properties. Reared at a court where pleasure was the only law, under the
+evil influence of Isabeau de Baviere--whenever she thought to trouble
+herself about him--and, later, of the savage and unscrupulous Bernard
+d'Armagnac, who wished to retain power for himself and hence debauched
+the young prince, it is not surprising to find Charles a libertine, and
+one easily controlled by any favorite who happened to be in the
+ascendant. As a boy of sixteen he had been made an accomplice, whether
+constructively guilty or not of the actual crime, in the murder of Duke
+Jean de Bourgogne. At nineteen he was proclaimed King of France by his
+handful of followers, while the victorious English were proclaiming
+Henry VI. in Paris (1422). Defeat followed defeat for his armies, owing
+partly to the demoralization of the troops, partly to the inability of
+the leaders to maintain any sort of discipline among the bands of half
+savage men at arms from Gascony, Brittany, Scotland, and even Italy and
+Spain. Yet for most of the disasters, Charles himself was to blame,
+since he continued to lead a life of slothful pleasure, making no
+serious efforts to control himself or to take an active part in the
+affairs of his ruined kingdom.
+
+The salvation of France was to come from a woman, one as nearly a saint
+as mortal can be; but some part of the preparation for the coming of
+that saint was made by other women, not by any means saintly. The wife
+of Charles VII. was Marie d'Anjou, who, with her husband, was under the
+domination of her mother, Yolande d'Aragon, one of those active, able,
+but unscrupulous women who rule by intrigue, who are content to let
+others claim the glory so long as the real secret of power is theirs.
+Queen Yolande, anxious to preserve the dignity of the house of Anjou for
+her son Rene, needed the support of France, and she hated England. She
+gained a remarkable ascendency over Charles VII., and used this most
+wisely for the good of France, though some of her methods may seem of a
+sort to disconcert prevailing opinions.
+
+Seeing that Charles was by nature a libertine, she determined to make
+use of that side of his character, although at the expense of her own
+daughter. It was she who presented to Charles that famous and lovely
+_Dame de beaute_, Agnes Sorel. The role played by this mistress of the
+king is truly admirable as well as remarkable. Agnes was no vulgar
+woman, but an Aspasia of her time, of noble birth, beautiful, and of a
+character gentle as well as essentially good. It is no paradox to
+pronounce her good, though she led a life condemned by moral laws; for
+the laxity of the age must be considered, as well as the methods of the
+mistress herself. Even the wife of her royal lover respected Agnes
+Sorel, and there was friendship between them. So far from seeking to
+surround herself with idle and vicious companions and encouraging
+Charles in offending useful friends or wise counsellors, she used her
+influence, in conjunction with Yolande, to establish the credit of the
+Constable de Richemont, the most useful of Charles's allies at this
+time.
+
+Legend has gilded her portrait for us, and much that is told of her is
+not susceptible of proof, but the tendency of her influence is shown by
+one little incident. Charles, unable to win back his kingdom, unable to
+maintain himself in it north of the Loire, unable to find money to pay
+his troops, was yet able to build a chateau at Loches for Agnes Sorel.
+Here he was basking in her smiles and heedless of the distress of
+France, when accident gave Agnes a chance to rouse his nobler feelings.
+Charles had, to amuse the passing hour, called a fortune teller to the
+chateau, and stood by while the man told the fortune of his well-beloved
+Agnes. The mountebank, with the cunning of his kind, thought to flatter
+this vain and lovely lady by prophesying: "Some day thou shalt be the
+wife of the greatest king on earth." Agnes, with ready wit, rose at once
+to her occasion. "If that be my true fortune," said she to the dauphin,
+"I must leave you this instant and go marry the King of England; for I
+see that, in the sloth that confines you here, you will not long be King
+of France." The shot told, and Charles was stung into momentary
+activity. Throughout her life Agnes continued to exert a salutary
+influence upon him; and when she died,--poisoned, it was said, by the
+then dauphin, afterward Louis XI,--evil favorites soon replaced the wise
+counsellors at the king's board, and his last years were as full of
+misery as had been those before Jeanne came mysteriously out of the east
+and gave him his crown.
+
+It was not Charles, the miserable, ungrateful voluptuary whose character
+we have attempted to show, that was loved and saved by Jeanne d'Arc; it
+was France, represented to her in the person of the dauphin. For her,
+Charles was a symbol, a mere incarnate _patrie_ for whose salvation she
+was commissioned by the Lord of Hosts; the man himself was nothing; in
+her simple peasant's heart, she hardly thought of him as a man, rather
+as a sort of divinity that could do no wrong, that must be worshipped,
+that must first of all be saved and set up safely in its tabernacle of
+Rouen. Unworthier idol never was created than this insensible thing
+called the dauphin, with as little care for the victims crushed beneath
+him as if he had been in very truth a mere wooden Juggernaut or Mumbo
+Jumbo; but all of us worship unworthy idols and are quite unconscious of
+their unworthiness. And, as in the case of Jeanne, if worship and
+worshipper be pure, what matter if the idol be a little unsteady on the
+pedestal to which our blind devotion has raised it?
+
+The worship of Jeanne for the dauphin had begun in very childhood, when
+this dream-guided little maid of Lorraine hardly knew what "king" or
+"kingdom" meant. Writers have remarked, as De Quincey and Michelet, upon
+the fact that Jeanne was born in a border land, on the marches of
+Lorraine and Champagne, in the debatable land between the great parties
+of Orleans and Burgundy; but the mere situation of this little village
+of Domremy upon the great Franco-German highway is a geographical fact
+that could be conned over and over, and then forgotten, without our
+being one whit the better or the worse. The dead fact is nevertheless a
+fruitful seed of thought, if we but allow it to come to germination. We
+may recall that in the present day the most enthusiastic of those
+patriots of France who are ever clamoring misguidedly for war are the
+people of this one-time border of France. However misguided may be the
+demonstrations of the crowds who annually drape in mourning the statue
+of Strasbourg on the Place de la Concorde, an enthusiastic patriotism is
+their inspiration. "The outposts of France, as one may call the great
+frontier provinces," De Quincey says, "were of all localities the most
+devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the
+generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin (Lorraine)
+that in gentler weather was forever tilting at the breast of France,
+could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; whilst to
+occupy a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy
+of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial
+pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always
+smouldering.... The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet
+from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of
+wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to centres so
+remote, into a manual of patriotic duty."
+
+Nursed in an atmosphere of patriotism, therefore, the little Jeanne had
+the horrors of war brought vividly before her when a band of brigands,
+nominally English or Burgundian partisans, rushed down upon Domremy,
+sacked the town, burned the church, and drove many of the inhabitants,
+including Jeanne's family, into temporary exile. The family came back
+again, and the immediate ravages of the soldiers were repaired, but
+Jeanne never forgot, and told in after years how she would shiver with
+horror and then weep from sheer pity at seeing her village friends come
+back wounded and bleeding from some affray with the English.
+
+Jeanne, the daughter of one who is described as a _simple laboureur_
+(which may mean that he was an independent farmer in a small way, not a
+mere laborer), was born in 1412, and was therefore old enough to see and
+to appreciate the worst of the miseries of France and to understand the
+tales of war and of English outrages brought to her father's door by
+many a traveller on the great highway that passed through Domremy; and
+her heart was filled with pity for the poor dauphin, repudiated by his
+own mother, exiled from his kingdom by the English, wandering aimlessly
+from province to province where the arms of his enemies made it safe for
+him to pass. The child's mind could but be stirred and filled with those
+vague, generous dreams of sacrifice, of heroism, of impossible
+achievements, which, like other visions, fade "into the light of common
+day" with most of us. Not so with Jeanne, in whom from the start there
+was something mystical, something that set her apart from other
+children.
+
+With her work-a-day life we are not concerned, nor with those members of
+her family who stand for none of the things of the spirit for which she
+was to serve. Her father, of whom even tradition has been able to make
+neither a monster nor a hero, was merely a commonplace peasant,
+apparently amiable and kindly, but manifestly incapable of sympathy with
+things ethereal and supernatural; we need not go so far as De Quincey
+and deny him patriotism: "He would greatly have preferred... the saving
+of a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France." And so
+with her brothers, Jean and Pierre; though ennobled by the king, and
+though doubtless very good fellows, they were certainly very far from
+being noble in spirit, or in any way comparable to their sister. For
+Jeanne's nobility was based upon no accident of birth or favor of a
+prince: it was the gift of God.
+
+The life of Jeanne d'Arc was probably not essentially different from
+that of other girls of her class, at least up to her fourteenth or
+fifteenth year. From the testimony of those who recalled the childhood
+of the heroine long after she had become a heroine we must turn with
+some distrust; for motives the most diverse may have induced, and
+doubtless did induce, them to conceal or even to misrepresent many
+things in this simple story. But there seems to be no doubt that Jeanne
+tended sheep, like her sister and other children of the neighborhood,
+that she learned all the simple little domestic arts, and "was a good
+girl, diligent at her work"; she herself refers with pride to her skill
+as a needlewoman: "My mother taught me so well that I could sew as well
+as any woman in Rouen," and Rouen was one of the centres of fine work;
+but of reading and writing, even the rudiments of education, she knew
+nothing. Of one other thing, too, there is no doubt, though the
+legend-mongers have doubtless colored the picture a little here also;
+this is that the child was pious, manifesting greater devoutness than
+was common among her class. And in this devoutness, too, a thing more
+significant still, she manifested a diffidence, a desire to withdraw
+herself and her prayers from the profanation of vulgar and inquisitive
+eyes.
+
+Much has been made of the mysterious associations of forests
+fairy-haunted, of trees where the children danced and hung garlands in
+honor of some fairy queen, whom the good _cure_ of the village devoutly
+exorcised every spring. What community in a land neighbored by mountains
+but has its "little people," whether fairies, hobgoblins, or gnomes? The
+learned doctors at Jeanne's trial were trying to fasten upon her some
+preposterous charge of witchcraft and association with the powers of
+evil; it was their business to drag in the fairies and to show that
+Jeanne knew more of such things than was good for the glory of God; and
+ever since, the biographers have seized upon what scanty ravellings of
+childish legend Jeanne could recall upon her trial, and have woven of
+them fine cobwebs of filmy pattern, to show how the whole soil of
+Domremy, more than any other particular spot in France, produced
+mushroom crops of fairies, and that a very miasma of enchantment was in
+the air. The mass of fanciful and sometimes exquisite rhetoric on this
+theme in the lives of Jeanne would surely have convicted her of
+witchcraft in the fifteenth century. In good truth, Jeanne probably had
+as firm belief in fairies as you and I once had in Hop-o'-my-Thumb and
+Red Ridinghood; but those were childish things, in no way connected with
+her mission.
+
+That which is of importance to note is that she was always a gentle and
+tender-hearted girl, ready to nurse the sick or to play with the
+children. "Well do I know it," says an aged peasant who testified for
+her memory years after she was dead, "I was then but a child, and she
+nursed me." But most important of all is the knowledge that her enemies
+could not find in Domremy one witness to testify against her; there was
+in her native village no envious wretch, no Ascalaphus, who could
+concoct a probable tale of any sort to the injury of one who had as a
+child led a life so pure, so good, but likewise so uneventful.
+
+At what time Jeanne began to see visions we cannot tell exactly; it is
+probable that the dreams of childhood, long indulged, merged at first
+unconsciously into visions that seemed to her as real as things seen
+with the bodily eye. By her own account, it was some six or seven years
+after she first felt called by the heavenly voices before she found
+courage to attempt the apparently impossible things they commanded. One
+vision she remembered all her life long, because it was kept constantly
+before her mind by the great passion of her life. She herself tells of
+this one, and neither persuasions nor ridicule nor the terrors of the
+prison could shake her absolute faith in its reality. "Long had she
+heard celestial voices, sometimes counselling her to be a good girl,
+sometimes specially recommending to her the practice of piety and the
+careful guarding of her virginity, sometimes echoing in unison with her
+own thoughts as they told her of the woes of France and the groans of
+the people. One day as she sat working and musing in the garden next to
+the church wall, there came a bright and blinding light, a heavenly
+effulgence stronger than the midday sun; then out of this glory came the
+voice, soft, yet commanding, of a man, whose glorious winged figure she
+could see dimly, saying: 'Jeanne, arise! go to the succor of the
+Dauphin, and thou shalt restore his kingdom to him.' The poor girl, all
+abashed, fell upon her knees: 'Messire, how can I do this, since I am
+but a poor girl, and know not how to ride or to lead men-at-arms?' But
+the voice insisted: 'Thou shalt go to the Sire de Baudricourt,
+commanding for the King at Vaucouleurs, and he will conduct thee to the
+Dauphin. Fear not; Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine will aid thee.'"
+
+Jeanne was in tears, for the fear of the thing, not daring as yet to
+confide in anyone. But the voices continued to importune her, and again
+she saw the angel, him whom in her simple fashion she described as
+_moult prudhomme_ (a very noble man), and whom she now recognized to be
+the very Saint Michael whose image she had seen in her church,
+triumphing over the dragon. And with him came fair women, all in white,
+with lights and troops of angels all about them, the holy and brave
+virgins Margaret and Catherine. They had come, as Saint Michael the
+Archangel had promised, to be her spiritual guides and comforters; and
+their blessed forms were never far from her, and their voices whispered
+to her to be of good cheer, for that through her and her alone France
+would be saved.
+
+Tortured by doubts and fears, she revealed these visions to her mother,
+from whom she had learned her _Ave, Pater, Credo_, the sweet and simple
+faith that meant so much to her. Her mother was half inclined to believe
+in Jeanne, and was at least sympathetic; but her father could see in
+these visions but childish nonsense that would lead his daughter astray.
+For him there was no faith in such things; can one blame him if he
+thought them but the silly moonings of a child, and dealt with that
+child sternly in the hope of saving her? He declared that he would drown
+Jeanne with his own hands rather than see her ride off with men-at-arms
+into that France of which he and she knew nothing but that it was from
+end to end given over to war and pillage. Thinking that marriage might
+dispel her illusions about saving France,--as indeed it would,--they
+persecuted her to marry a young villager who had fallen desperately in
+love with her and claimed that she had promised to marry him. With a
+courage that must have surprised even herself, she went before the
+ecclesiastical court of Toul and told her story so frankly that the
+judge dismissed the desperate lover. Not for her were the joys and
+sorrows of a wife and mother.
+
+With all her determination and masculine contempt for those things that
+are terrors to most women, Jeanne loved her home. In after years she was
+ever sighing for the quiet life of her father's cottage, where she might
+sit and spin with her mother, or wander forth over the fields with her
+sister to tend the sheep. What a piteous struggle must there have been
+in her breast! On the one hand, an angry father, whom she loved, a
+mother whom she loved better, a safe home, and in it all that her simple
+heart desired; on the other, the great and terrible world, the armies of
+rough men, the dissolute courtiers, the long journeys over an unknown
+country, for one who had hardly stirred out of sight of Domremy church
+tower. Love of home, so strong in the hearts of all women, so precious
+to the peasant woman of France above all others, must be renounced for
+love of country. There have been no better or more determined patriots
+than women, as Caesar found when the women of Gaul cheered their husbands
+on to the contest with his legions; but these women were fighting at
+home, as it were upon the threshold; they did not go forth to lead
+armies in offensive warfare; theirs was the steady courage of
+desperation, not the active courage which must sustain itself, keep its
+own fires alive, instead of relying upon the stimulus of impulse and a
+desperate crisis. All the fears and heartbreakings of the struggle in
+Jeanne's mind have been hidden from us, for she speaks not of them;
+having fought out this battle with herself and decided that France needs
+her more than does her mother, she does not allow herself to turn back,
+and we get but a plaintive reminiscence here and there, since she has
+locked up this grief in her heart.
+
+The opportunity to attempt the execution of the commands imposed by her
+voices was long in coming; she had become a subject of common talk in
+her village; everywhere she met discouraging incredulity, if not
+ridicule. It was not that there was lack of belief in marvels, for the
+land was filled with stories of portents and wonders in which the people
+did not hesitate to believe. There was the holy peasant whom the great
+captain, Xaintrailles, brought before the court to display upon his
+hands and feet the very marks of the cross, the stigmata, and who was
+said to sweat blood upon the day of the Passion. There was Catherine de
+la Rochelle, who saw visions of angels and who proclaimed herself
+commissioned to discover treasures for the dauphin. In these and the
+like the people of Domremy may have believed; but not in their own
+little peasant girl; for had they not known her when she was but like
+the rest, a simple shepherdess?
+
+In one member of her family Jeanne found faith, and to him she turned
+for help. This was her uncle, whose wife she was sent to nurse and whose
+spark of faith she kindled during this stay till, what with her urging
+and that of his wife, the good man' went to Vaucouleurs and carried
+Jeanne's message to Baudricourt. Is it any wonder that the seigneur
+smiled derisively at this foolish peasant who came to him with a message
+from a girl declaring that he must give her soldiers to accomplish that
+which the best captains of France could not accomplish? He was not
+unduly harsh, merely contemptuous in his rebuff: "Whip the girl well,
+and send her home to her father." There are so many with "missions" in
+this world, missions that are but vain imaginings, profiting naught; the
+more experience one has had in the world the more one learns to distrust
+these missions; and beyond a doubt the chastisement suggested by the
+Sire de Baudricourt would, in nine cases out of ten, have ended the
+mission and cured the hysterical enthusiast.
+
+We say nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, or any
+further multiples you please, with careless assurance that there is no
+tenth case, and that fate will not take our wager and prove us fools, no
+matter what the odds we offer. But there is that tenth case, and the
+world is caught, the wise world, as here in the case of the peasant lass
+of Lorraine, at whom all in Domremy smiled indulgently, whom all in
+France were soon to worship.
+
+It was the month of February, 1429, when the eyes of all France were
+fixed upon one city, Orleans. To the shattered French party it was the
+last hope of their dauphin; to the English it was the barrier which shut
+them off from the south of France. Since October the siege had been in
+progress, and England had given the command of her besieging forces to
+the best captains, while Dunois held out for France and for his
+half-brother, that Charles d'Orleans who had been a prisoner in England
+ever since Agincourt. But neither the skill of Dunois nor the gay
+courage of the citizens could cope with famine; it looked as if Orleans
+must fall, and all France mourned in advance the fate of the gallant
+city. Charles, the dauphin, wept at Chinon, and was without hope or
+counsel. In the heart of the daughter of Domremy one fervent prayer
+replaced all others: that Orleans might be saved! Her voices grew more
+and more importunate, crying to her ceaselessly that it was for her to
+save Orleans. With this more definite and immediate aim in mind she
+found courage to make another appeal to Baudricourt. She persuaded her
+uncle to accompany her, and the two trudged on foot to Vaucouleurs,
+where Jeanne was lodged with a wheelwright, her mother's cousin.
+
+Impatient at the persistence of this mad girl, Baudricourt nevertheless
+consented to see her, probably thinking that he would thus more easily
+rid himself of her. In her simple peasant's dress of red cloth the young
+mystic stood before him. She was not tall, but was well proportioned and
+sturdy; in her features there was nothing remarkable, merely a
+regularity that failed of absolute beauty by being commonplace; still,
+it was a comely face, and even the sceptic Baudricourt could not fail to
+note the honesty and gentleness of the expression, or the deep and
+dreamy eyes, the sole feature that revealed some gleams of the great
+spirit within. Without hesitation or embarrassment and yet without
+effrontery she answered his questions, and uttered her message to the
+dauphin: "My lord, I come to you in the name of God, bidding you enjoin
+the dauphin to hold firm and to set no day of battle with the enemy at
+this time, for God will send him aid about Mid-Lent. The kingdom is not
+his alone, but God's. Nevertheless, the Lord meaneth that he shall be
+King, despite his enemies; and it is I who shall lead him to be crowned
+at Rheims."
+
+Baudricourt could not surrender at once to the faint belief aroused in
+him by Jeanne's earnestness, but the faint belief was already there, and
+he dismissed her kindly to reflect upon what she had said. The _cure_ of
+the parish was called into consultation, and the knight and the priest
+agreed that it was quite possible that Satan might have a hand in all
+this, and the two visited Jeanne, the priest exorcising the evil spirit,
+whereat Jeanne did not fly away or disappear with a flash and a bad
+smell of powder and brimstone. Her simple piety satisfied and touched
+the priest.
+
+Meanwhile, rumors of her wonderful visions and of her sanctity began to
+be current among the people and to find credence. Had it not been
+prophesied by the mighty Merlin that France should be lost through a
+wicked woman and saved by a pure virgin? Who could the wicked woman be
+other than Isabeau de Baviere, who had sold France and disinherited and
+denied her own son? And here was Jeanne, a pure child, come to redeem
+France. It was criminal in Baudricourt to doubt, to reject the
+assistance thus sent by God himself. Crowds of people, gentles and mere
+laborers, visited Jeanne, and all were sure of one thing at least, that
+she was a good girl, while many went away firm believers in her mission.
+A gentleman, Jean de Metz, thinking to jest with her, said: "Well,
+sweetheart, then we must all turn English, since the King will be driven
+out of France." But there was no thought of jest in her, as she
+complained of Baudricourt's refusal to send her to the dauphin: "And yet
+they must get me to the Dauphin before Mid-Lent, were I to wear out my
+legs to the knees walking there. For no one in this world, kings, nor
+dukes, nor daughter of the king of Scotland, can win back the kingdom of
+France; and there is for him no other help save in me, albeit I should
+far rather stay beside my poor mother and spin.... For this is not my
+work, fighting battles; but I needs must go to do that which is
+commanded, for my Lord so wills it."
+
+Baudricourt hesitated to assume the responsibility of any action in the
+matter. He took Jeanne to see the old Duke de Lorraine, his feudal
+superior. Duke Charles, at that time under the domination of a mistress,
+Alison du May, of great wit and beauty, was ill, and thought the
+miraculous maiden of Domremy might restore him to health and the arms of
+Alison. Jeanne, very wisely and frankly, told him to put away his
+paramour and take back his wife and lead a decent life. She was no
+worker of vulgar miracles to profit a worn-out old roue.
+
+Coming back to Vaucouleurs, she found the authorities more ready to give
+her a hearing, for the situation in Orleans had become desperate, and
+the gallant citizens, who had entered into the siege with as much
+eagerness as if it had been but play, found enthusiasm very exhausting
+and food supplies very scant. Jeanne had predicted the date and the
+disastrous result of the battle of Rouvray, "the battle of the Herrings"
+(February 12, 1429), and the people of Vaucouleurs believed in her.
+Grudgingly and half-heartedly, the Sire de Baudricourt was compelled to
+yield to her request and to despatch her to the dauphin. Some citizens
+of the town subscribed a sum to equip her with horse and armor, and the
+Sire de Baudricourt himself gave her a sword. For the long journey
+through a rough country the poor girl, with no woman companion, could
+not retain her simple gown, but must be dressed as a man-at-arms. On the
+very eve of her departure, she was subjected to another severe trial to
+her feelings: her parents, hearing of her determination, sent to
+implore, to command, her not to go; and Jeanne, unable to write, had to
+dictate a letter asking their forgiveness for her disobedience.
+
+Her little troop, consisting of two gentlemen and a few men of their
+following, had to traverse part of the country where the Burgundian
+interest was strong, for the dauphin was then holding his court at
+Chinon, near Tours. And the dangers of the road infested by hostile
+troops were not the only dangers, for among her own companions there
+were many misgivings: they knew not whether to reverence her as a saint
+or to destroy her as a witch. The latter course, indeed, they were very
+near pursuing; but the innocence and the harmless, hopeful, confident
+demeanor of the girl moved their hearts to pity.
+
+She arrived at Chinon on February 24th, and sent word to Charles that
+she had much to tell him that would comfort his heart, and that she had
+come one hundred and fifty leagues to see him; but Charles had no will
+of his own, and his councillors wrangled about what should be done.
+There was a strong party opposed to Jeanne, but her friends, headed by
+Queen Yolande, carried the day, and she was admitted to see the king,
+or, as she continued to call him until after the consecration at Rheims,
+the dauphin. The story of how this country maiden was introduced into
+the throng of dazzling courtiers and left to divine which was the chosen
+of the Lord has been too often told, and too generally credited, to need
+either retelling or defence; the whole story of Jeanne d'Arc is so
+little short of what we would call miraculous that it seems a petty
+thing to balk at this one detail. Whether by divine inspiration, or by
+mere luck, or by the friendly and secret guidance of her followers,
+Jeanne did discover Charles, and spoke without fear as she knelt at the
+feet of this unworthy prince whom she had come so far to save: "Gentle
+Dauphin, I am called Jeanne la Pucelle; the King of Heaven sends you
+word by me that you shall be consecrated and crowned in the city of
+Rheims, and that you shall be his lieutenant in France. Give me,
+therefore, soldiers, that I may raise the siege of Orleans and take you
+to Rheims to be consecrated. It is God's will that your enemies, the
+English, shall go back to their own land; and woe be unto them if they
+do not go; for the kingdom shall be and remain your own."
+
+The dauphin could but be struck by these words, uttered with such
+directness and earnestness; but he still doubted of the divine mission
+of the peasant girl. Might she not be an impostor, hired by his enemies?
+Might she not be, if nothing worse, merely a poor demented creature? His
+mind had been much tormented by doubts of his own legitimacy. The
+English openly proclaimed him no son of Charles VI.; his mother's
+intimacy with Orleans was too notorious and too recent a scandal to be
+concealed, and he had been born at the very moment when that intimacy
+was at its height, while she who was his mother had acted as if there
+were good reason why he should not inherit the crown; is it any wonder
+that the wretched young prince himself half believed the allegations of
+his foes? He desired reassurance on this point, and it was doubtless to
+ask some question of the kind that he now led Jeanne d'Arc aside and
+seemed to converse with her in low tones. All that passed between them
+has never been told, since Jeanne refused to reveal it; but the
+courtiers saw his countenance light up, and it was known that she had
+told him good news, and this much she confessed to having said: "I am
+sent from God to assure you that you are the true heir of France, the
+son of the King."
+
+The dauphin may have been momentarily converted to faith in Jeanne la
+Pucelle; but he was vacillating, and some of his wisest councillors,
+including the chancellor, would not believe in her. She must first be
+proved no witch and a pure virgin. To both these tests Jeanne submitted
+willingly and courageously, and from both she came out vindicated. As
+they prepared to take her to Poitiers, where some half dozen learned
+doctors of the church were to focus their wisdom upon this poor child,
+she said: "Well do I see that many a hard trial awaits me in Poitiers;
+but God will aid me. Let us go, then, with stout hearts." During the
+interrogation to which she was subjected by the theologians, the one
+dominant characteristic of the girl--not of the saint--was strongly
+brought out: her common sense. Her answers, though naive and utterly
+unsophisticated, by their frankness and good sense frequently
+discomfited the most adroit catechists. One of the doctors objected: "If
+God wishes to deliver the people of France he has no need of
+men-at-arms." With readiness and rational, half-humorous shrewdness,
+Jeanne replied: "Ah! my God! the men-at-arms will fight, and God will
+give the victory." Then Brother Seguin, "a very sour man," with a strong
+twang of his native Limoges, would fain know "what tongue these Heavenly
+visitors spoke?" "A better than thine," replied Jeanne. "I did not come
+to show signs or work miracles in Poitiers; the sign I shall give you
+will be to raise the siege of Orleans. Give me soldiers, few or many,
+and I will go."
+
+Confident of coming out scathless from the examination of the doctors,
+Jeanne grew weary of the long delay and dictated a letter to the English
+regent, Bedford, announcing to him that "the Maid has come from God to
+drive you out of France." Finally, the representatives of the Church
+gave it as their opinion that it would be lawful to employ this maid, if
+in very truth she were a maid, "for the hand of God works in mysterious
+ways!" Her purity of life and of body were more easily established than
+her orthodoxy, and now there remained nothing but to grant her prayer
+and let her march on to Orleans. For Orleans, too, had heard of its
+advocate, and the gallant Dunois sent entreaty after entreaty that they
+would send the maid to him.
+
+A little retinue was provided as her personal escort, under command of a
+staunch and staid old knight, Jean Daulon, with a page, two heralds, a
+steward, two valets, and Jeanne's brother, Pierre d'Arc. Clothed in pure
+white armor--white as symbolizing the purity of the heroine--and mounted
+upon her black horse, glorious must have been the sight of the sweet
+maid, a very _sursum corda_ to every loyal heart in France. One can see
+through the mists of years the seraphic smile of tender triumph with
+which she looked up at her banner, the holy banner that was of white
+with _fleurs-de-lis_ upon it, and on one side the Lord of Hosts Himself,
+with angels by His side, holding the world in His hands. And then she
+waved aloft the sacred sword of Saint Catherine with its five crosses,
+which she had discovered hid behind the altar of Saint Catherine de
+Fierbois; the word was at last: "On to Orleans!"
+
+No greater contrast could have been than that here set before the eyes
+of wondering France: on the one hand, the chaste, kindly, simple-hearted
+Jeanne; on the other, leaders and soldiers brutalized by long years of
+desultory civil war. Think of a Sire de Giac, who gave poison to his
+wife and then, setting her astride a horse, made her gallop till she
+died. When he was brought to justice he prayed that his right hand,
+vowed to the service of the devil, might be cut off before his
+execution, lest the astute ruler of Hades seize the said hand and drag
+the whole body along with it. Or think, again, of Gilles de Retz, the
+Marquis de Laval, whose murders of children (to the number of one
+hundred and sixty, some say) were so atrocious that he was at last
+seized, tried, condemned to death at the stake and to eternal, if
+mistaken, association with that nursery horror, Bluebeard. Think of him
+riding beside Jeanne la Pucelle, nay, standing beside her at the
+coronation in Rheims and fetching the sacred ampulla! What an associate
+for her was even that brave and loyal friend Etienne Vignoles, nicknamed
+Lahire (the Barker), who was wont to say, in extenuation of the
+universal practice of plundering and brigandage among the so-called
+soldiers, "Were God to turn man-at-arms, He too would pillage!" It was
+he who prayed before a battle, with less reverence but surely not with
+less fervency than some other pious soldiers: _Sire Dieu, je te prie de
+faire pour Lahire ce que Lahire ferait pour toi, si tu etais capitaine
+et si Lahire etait Dieu_ (Sir God, I pray thee to do for Lahire what
+Lahire would do for thee, if thou were a soldier and Lahire were God).
+It is a most excellent and comprehensive prayer, good to prefer when one
+has not time to remind the Deity of each little thing He should do.
+
+With an army composed of such men, Jeanne d'Arc set out for Orleans; but
+she sadly doubted if her saints would be coadjutors to such unrepentant
+sinners. Accordingly, she insisted that the morals of the camp be
+reformed. Lahire must swear no more dreadful, soul-blasting oaths; he
+obeyed, but the good-hearted girl, seeing him at a loss for unseasoned
+speech, relented so far as to permit him to swear "by his baton." But
+the reform did not end with puerile matters; the Pucelle would have no
+loose women about the camp; all her soldiers must go humbly and confess
+their sins before they dared to follow her sacred banner; in the open
+air upon the banks of the Loire she raised an altar, and all must take
+communion with her. No need of the dauphin's order to Dunois,
+Xaintrailles, Lahire, Boussac, and the other captains to respect the
+person and obey the commands of Jeanne la Pucelle; the enthusiasm
+inspired by her innocent face, the patriotism of her unselfish heart,
+that mysterious power which, sometimes and only sometimes, the good and
+pure and utterly defenseless exert upon evil natures these were far
+stronger motives than the commands of a prince so weak that he could not
+maintain his own in half of France. It was a crusade upon which this
+fair young saint was leading them; and something of the old ardor of the
+crusaders inspired her followers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TRIUMPH AND MARTYRDOM OF JEANNE D'ARC
+
+WHILE the army of Jeanne d'Arc, starting with but four or five thousand
+men and gathering numbers from every side as it goes, is marching toward
+Orleans, let us look at the military situation of that town and of the
+English cause in France. To begin with, the force of the besiegers had
+never been large; during the long siege it had been reduced by disease,
+by loss in battle, by defections, till the English army itself was
+almost in as great straits as the garrison. Moreover, in order to secure
+themselves, the English had constructed a dozen or more small forts, or
+_bastilles_, on both sides of the Loire, and the garrisons of these
+places had no sure means of intercommunication. It is true that plans
+were on foot for reinforcing the besiegers, but the political conditions
+in France and England were such as very seriously to handicap Bedford.
+There was never hearty cooperation between him and the all-powerful
+Cardinal Winchester; the Duke of Gloucester was wrangling with
+Winchester, and had not long ago seriously offended Bedford's most
+important ally, Philippe de Bourgogne, by marrying Jacqueline of
+Flanders and espousing her cause against the Burgundians. Though
+Gloucester had since married another lady--bigamy was but a small
+matter--and had patched up matters with Philippe de Bourgogne, the
+latter was showing distinct signs of estrangement from the English. Much
+depended therefore on the successful termination of the siege of
+Orleans, and the English power, apparently at its climax, needed but a
+slight check to start it on the decline.
+
+All this must lead us to ponder upon the achievements of that force now
+collected under the white banner of Jeanne, and to ask ourselves, were
+those achievements indeed so marvellous, from a military point of view?
+When the chemist has evaporated his solution of a salt almost to the
+point of crystallization, and yet it will not crystallize, a mere
+splinter cast into the dish will suddenly gather to itself the
+hesitating particles, and the crystals form as if by magic. The figure
+will help us to understand the condition of the dauphin's cause and the
+kind of influence exerted by Jeanne d'Arc. She was the nucleus, lacking
+which the French forces might have continued mere floating and helpless
+bands, without a leader, without a common cause; above all, without hope
+or enthusiasm. There was no lack of valiant soldiers on the side of the
+dauphin, the Constable de Richemont, Dunois, Xaintrailles, Lahire,
+Gilles de Retz, Armagnac; all these were either in Jeanne's army or in
+Orleans. It was her presence, her influence, that enabled them to
+combine successfully. She was essential to them, no doubt; but had she
+herself not said wisely and well: "The men-at-arms will fight, and God
+will give the victory "?
+
+The captains of the dauphin's army thoroughly appreciated the value, the
+inestimable value, of the enthusiasm aroused by the Maid, and they made
+shrewd use of it; but they had no intention of trusting the whole
+campaign to spiritual direction, whether of saints or devils; and some
+of them were not a little inclined to view Jeanne as hardly better than
+a witch. It might have been better for France had they trusted to the
+guidance of the heroine. She would have marched up to Orleans on the
+side of the river held most strongly by the English and have defied
+them, be the risk what it might. By a deception she was led to cross the
+Loire, and was indignant when, on reaching Orleans, she discovered that
+the river lay between her and the town.
+
+Dunois, commander-in-chief in Orleans, seeing her from the ramparts,
+crossed the river at once and came to give her reverent and joyful
+greeting. After reproaching him and the other captains for placing more
+reliance upon human prudence than upon Divine behests, she said: "I
+bring you the best succor that ever knight or city had; it is the succor
+of the King of Heaven, and comes not from me, but from God." It was the
+29th of April, and that same evening, at eight o'clock, Jeanne entered
+Orleans with provisions and an escort, the main body of the army
+retiring to Blois to cross the Loire.
+
+Orleans went mad with joy at the advent of its heaven-sent deliverer. As
+she rode through the streets the crowds blocked her way, and eager
+admirers rudely jostled each other in the struggle but to touch the
+horse that bore her. With sweet kindliness, she thanked them, losing
+none of her humility, and exhorting them to thank not her, but God and
+the dauphin. For that night and the rest of her stay in Orleans she was
+lodged with the wife of the treasurer of Charles d'Orleans, and slept
+with one of the daughters of the house. Sturdy and healthy as she was,
+the unaccustomed rough life of the camp, sleeping with her armor on and
+none but men about her, had occasioned her great fatigue.
+
+The operations of the siege had been suspended by the English, who
+sullenly kept to their _bastilles_. Jeanne insisted upon an immediate
+attack, and during the week that followed she was with difficulty
+restrained from rash enterprises. Indeed, she could not always be
+restrained, and her rashness was not infrequently rewarded with
+unexpected success. Warned of the approach of English reinforcements
+under Sir John Fastolf, she conjured Dunois to let her know without
+delay of his coming. She suspected Dunois of intending to engage Fastolf
+without her, and in her nervous eagerness to be up and doing for France
+she precipitated a successful attack upon the bastilles. She had retired
+to rest for a few hours in the middle of the day when the noise of a
+tumult in the streets aroused her; the cry was that the French were
+being slaughtered at one of the gates. Leaping from her couch, and
+hardly taking time to have half of her armor buckled on, she mounted her
+horse and, seizing her banner as it was reached to her from a window,
+galloped toward the gates. On the way, she met the wounded and her heart
+was moved at the sight of blood. Without the authority of Dunois the
+garrison had undertaken an assault upon the _bastille_ of Saint-Loup,
+which stood most directly across the path of those who would bring
+supplies into Orleans. The French had been beaten back, but with the
+arrival of Jeanne hope and courage returned. Jeanne in person led a
+fresh assault, while Talbot, the English commander, vainly strove to
+rally his men and dissipate their fears of "the witch." The English were
+forced to retire, and the fort fell into the hands of Jeanne, who,
+lapsing at once from warrior into woman after this first experience of
+an actual battle, wept over the slain, cared for the wounded, and did
+her best to protect the English prisoners from her own savage followers.
+
+The military success was not great, but the mere fact of success in this
+first active enterprise enhanced Jeanne's credit in the eyes of her own
+party. Nevertheless, the military chiefs hesitated to trust her, perhaps
+because they were jealous of her; and while she was spending Ascension
+day in fasting and prayer they held a council at which it was determined
+to attack the principal English fort under cover of a feint upon one on
+the other side of Orleans. She was told only of the feigned attack, but
+Dunois later confessed the truth, refusing, however, to allow her to
+proceed to the assault in person. As she watched the battle from afar,
+saw the French carry and burn one fort, and then saw them repulsed from
+before another, her impatience could no longer be restrained. Crossing
+the river with a few followers, she rallied her people, who followed her
+charmed standard and captured the fort, which Jeanne fired with her own
+hand.
+
+Once more the wisdom or the expediency of her seemingly rash counsels
+had been vindicated; but still the leaders hesitated, and determined to
+await reinforcements before attacking the fort of Les Tournelles, in
+which the English had now concentrated a considerable part of their
+forces. "Nay," said Jeanne, "you have been at your councils, but I have
+been at mine. Know that the counsel of my King and Lord shall prevail
+over yours." She ordered her chaplain to be ready to attend her at break
+of day: "For I shall have much to do, more than I have done any day yet.
+Blood shall issue from my body, for I shall be wounded." With the
+English daily awaiting reinforcements, it is difficult to comprehend
+what could have induced experienced military leaders to meditate delay
+instead of pursuing the advantage already gained; yet they shut the
+gates next morning to keep Jeanne in, and her host, Milet, begged her to
+remain quietly to sup with him. "Keep your supper," she said; "I shall
+bring back some _Goddems_ to eat it with us." The national oath, which
+Figaro was to consider sufficient for all conversation in English, was
+manifestly familiar and characteristic three centuries before his time.
+
+In spite of the orders of their chiefs the men-at-arms followed their
+idol, forced the gates, and charged upon the English fort. As the sun
+rose over the Loire the desperate struggle began, the English defending
+themselves with determination and driving back column after column till
+the dead and wounded lay in heaps beneath the walls of Les Tournelles.
+Sword in hand, La Pucelle placed a ladder against the wall, and as she
+mounted an arrow pierced her shoulder. As she fell fainting to the earth
+the English sallied forth to capture her, but she was rescued by the
+Sire de Gamaches, who had been one of those who refused to serve as a
+captain in an army dominated by "a mere girl, who may have been God
+knows what." Though sceptical of her mission, he was a gallant soldier,
+and succeeded in removing the wounded heroine to a place of safety.
+
+If the pain of the wound and the sight of her own blood had unnerved
+Jeanne, the spectacle of their wounded deliverer completely demoralized
+her soldiers. They pressed about her offering to dress the wound, to
+remove the arrow, to charm away the pain by magic incantations. She
+would have none of the works of Satan for her healing. Praying to her
+saints for strength, she rallied her courage, pulled the arrow out with
+her own hands, and had the wound dressed with oil. It was nearly dark,
+and the captains were for retiring, but Jeanne's spirits inspired her to
+continue the fight. The Sire de Daulon, her knight, rushed back to the
+fosse of the fort to recover the sacred banner, dropped there in the
+confusion of the fray. As he raised it to the breeze its folds were
+opened, and the disheartened French soldiers charged again. "If my
+banner but touch the walls," said Jeanne, "the fort will fall." Wounded
+as she was, she mounted her horse and rode toward the fort. Panic seized
+the English at what seemed to them a miraculous restoration to life of
+one whom they thought dead, and their excited imaginations saw the
+heavenly hosts, led by Michael, fighting on the French side. Attempting
+a hurried evacuation, the English captain, Glasdale, was precipitated
+into the Loire from a frail bridge on which he was crossing; the fort
+was taken, and the remnant of its defenders put to the sword.
+
+[Illustration 6:
+JEANNE D'ARC.
+After the painting by Jean J. Scherrer.
+Orleans went mad with joy at the advent of its heaven-sent deliverer. As
+she rode through the streets the crowds blocked her way, and eager
+admirers rudely jostled each other in the struggle but to touch the
+horse that bore her. With sweet kindliness, she thanked them, losing
+none of her humility, and exhorting them to thank not her, but God and
+the dauphin. For that night and the rest of her stay in Orleans she was
+lodged with the wife of the treasurer of Charles d'Orleans, and slept
+with one of the daughters of the house. Sturdy and healthy as she was,
+the unaccustomed rough life of the camp, sleeping with her armor on and
+none but men about her, had occasioned her great fatigue.]
+
+The last of the English defences south of the Loire was destroyed, and
+the next day, May 8, 1429, Talbot and Suffolk led their army in retreat.
+As it was Sunday, Jeanne let them depart unmolested, but ere the last of
+the English columns had disappeared an altar was raised in the plain and
+the holy maid was joined by her army and by the people of Orleans in a
+Mass to celebrate their deliverance.
+
+It had taken nine days only for this courageous and resolute girl to
+undo months of work on the part of the English. Her steadfast faith in
+herself, her refusal to be turned aside from her duty, had worked the
+miracle; and for it all she thanked God, and prayed for support in what
+yet remained to do. To France, indeed, she seemed a miracle herself; and
+learned doctors of the Church undertook to prove, forsooth, that what
+she had done was of God, not of the devil, while Frenchmen who had held
+aloof from the despised and discredited heir of France began to ask
+themselves whether, after all, he were not the lawful ruler of France,
+since God had sent this inspired leader of his armies.
+
+Sweet is the savor of triumph; to all who are touched with ambition the
+mere joy of victory, with the homage of men and the flattery that follow
+in the train of victory, is so sweet that in vainglory they forget what
+yet remains to be done. But in Jeanne there was no ambition; she
+rejoiced and gave thanks to God that through her he had saved Orleans;
+but the glory was God's, not hers. Orleans, too, was but the first stage
+in her career, of whose brief duration she warned her friends, and of
+whose tragic end her earnest heart may already have had some
+forebodings. "You must use me quickly," she said, "for I shall last but
+one year." In that brief year there was much to be accomplished: yet for
+long she was compelled to rest, or to fret, while timid or selfish
+advisers held back the dauphin from granting her prayer to be allowed to
+march at once to Rheims. With practically all the intervening country in
+the hands of the English, such a march seemed the extreme of folly. It
+would be risking too much for the empty ceremony of consecrating the
+dauphin at Rheims. But to Jeanne that consecration was the one thing
+needed to complete her share in the rehabilitation of France, the one
+thing which her celestial guardians now insisted on her undertaking, and
+for which they promised her their support. Moreover, the English were
+already demoralized, filled with fear of this "witch," for whom they had
+nothing but words of contempt that only veneered their hearty dread of
+her. Whether witch or mere woman, they feared the influence of this
+Jeanne upon French imagination; and as aliens in the land, they
+exaggerated the danger of a sudden wave of national feeling that would
+sweep them from France, while they saw disaffection on all sides. All
+this the French captains could not, of course, have known; but they
+should have appreciated the importance of following up the advantage won
+at Orleans and of using the enthusiasm kindled by La Pucelle before
+there should be time for it to cool. It was only after much wrangling,
+and fresh ecclesiastical debate as to the sources of her inspiration,
+that Jeanne's counsel at length prevailed and she was allowed to set out
+for Rheims.
+
+Before this decision was reached, however, other victories had come to
+crown Jeanne's banner and to make the approach to Rheims less of a
+military hazard. Suffolk had retired to Jargeau, on the Loire, and this
+place must be reduced before the French could venture northward. Jeanne
+led in the assault, and narrowly missed death from a huge stone that
+crushed her helmet. Nevertheless, Jargeau fell, and Suffolk himself was
+among the prisoners. De Richemont and his Bretons came to join the
+forces of the dauphin, and they went in search of the second English
+army, under Talbot and Fastolf, encamped no one knew where in that
+Beauce which the war had rendered almost a desert. As the French army
+moved cautiously forward in the wilderness, the vanguard started a deer,
+which ran straight into the English lines. Warned of their presence by
+the cries of the English soldiers, the French were enabled to come upon
+them suddenly, and the bloody victory of Patay (June 18th) was won: two
+thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the field and Talbot was carried
+off a prisoner.
+
+No longer could the enthusiasm of her followers be quelled; and though
+old captains shook their heads, the dauphin and the court were forced to
+yield to the popular clamor for an immediate attempt to reach Rheims.
+Marching around Paris by way of Auxerre, only Troyes blocked the way,
+and its garrison, panic-struck, evacuated the town after a show of
+resistance. On July 9th Charles entered Troyes, where, with
+characteristic selfishness, he would have let the English march away
+with their prisoners but for the intervention of Jeanne. Less than a
+week later he entered Rheims in triumph, with Jeanne beside him. She it
+was, we would fain think, whom the people welcomed with transports of
+joy, not the dauphin whom she was to make a king. Well might the people
+crowd about her, hold up their infants for her to bless, and beg but to
+touch the hem of her garment; for kings in plenty shall the earth know,
+while there may be but one Jeanne d'Arc. On July 17th Jeanne stood in
+the cathedral, with her blessed banner, while the ancient ceremonies of
+the consecration were performed, and the dauphin, now anointed from the
+sacred ampulla, was King of France in name and in right, let the English
+proclaim Henry VI. as they would.
+
+In that gathering of the nobles and chief priests of France what one was
+there who considered the ceremony with such unselfish purity of heart as
+this peasant girl of Lorraine! To some it was merely an idle spectacle,
+a court function like another; to some it was a political event full of
+promise, from which they themselves might hope for advantages more or
+less selfish; to Jeanne d'Arc it was the sacred fulfilment of that which
+God had promised her. Her task was completed now; how gladly would she
+have left the scene, without a thought of worldly advancement, content
+to have been Jeanne la Pucelle, through whom France was to be saved,
+content to be once more merely Jeanne the shepherdess.
+
+When the crown was placed on the dauphin's head Jeanne knelt before him,
+and wept as she embraced his knees. "O gentle king," she said, "now is
+fulfilled the will of God, who was pleased that I should raise the siege
+of Orleans and should bring you to your city of Rheims to be crowned and
+anointed, in proof that you are true king and rightful possessor of the
+realm of France." She herself felt that her mission was accomplished,
+and besought the king to allow her to return to her home, "to my father
+and mother, to keep their sheep for them, as was my wont." But Jeanne
+was too useful to be allowed to retire, and though she no longer heard
+the call of her divine monitors Charles insisted on her remaining to
+help him to win back his kingdom; but "all that was to be done she had
+now accomplished; what remained was--to suffer."
+
+As she rode through the streets of Rheims she exclaimed: "O why can I
+not die here!" "And where, then, will you die?" asked the archbishop. "I
+know not; it will be where God pleases. I have done what my Lord
+commanded me to do. Now I would that it might please Him to send me back
+to keep my sheep with my sister and my mother." Her courage was as high
+as ever, the brave heart faltered not, but it was no longer inspired.
+"She began to hear those voices, no longer from heaven, but from the
+hearth, those voices that vainly call disheartened man, sick of ambition
+and glory, to the home of his earliest affections, to the humble
+occupations of his childhood, to the obscurity of his early days."
+Hearken to those voices, Jeanne, and strive no longer to awaken faint
+echoes of thy heavenly voices:
+
+                   "The oracles are dumb,...
+        No nightly trance or breathed spell
+        Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."
+
+This portion of Jeanne's life has always seemed to me the most pitiful,
+the period when "her God had forsaken her," when her heart warned her
+that her divine task was done, and when yet that heart yearned to do
+more for France. In the hour of supreme trial strength came to her with
+the thought that her suffering was the will of God; but now what was the
+will of God? In vain she prayed for guidance; there was nothing but the
+timidity and the yearning for rest of this girlish heart on the one
+hand, and the pleading of the king and the courtiers on the other. It
+was not to be expected that Jeanne, always willing to sacrifice herself,
+should do anything else than consent still to be, as she had been for
+three glorious months, the leader of France, the bodily representative
+of national feeling. With or without inspiration, she could serve.
+
+Disaster followed upon disaster in her brief subsequent career; but
+always she was the same honest, hopeful, pure girl, striving her utmost
+to discipline her army, to restrain the cruelty of her soldiers, to win
+for the dauphin a reconciliation with his cousin of Burgundy. Some of
+her biographers have noted, or pretended to note, a lamentable change in
+her character at this time. It is said that she became less scrupulous
+of shedding blood, less careful in enforcing moral and religious
+discipline among her followers, above all, less gentle and patient in
+temper. But Jeanne had never been able to compel absolute obedience from
+soldiers little better than banditti, and when the notion of her
+sanctity began to fade away as the men saw her in the daily life of the
+camp, and saw her a mere human creature, fallible like themselves, her
+strongest hold on them was loosened. She had never been, since her
+mission was assumed, a mere dainty, meek, unresisting heroine of
+romance, a paragon of grace and beauty for whom knights risked their
+lives while she sat by and smiled and dressed the wounds of the victor
+after the fight. She had definitely and from the first taken an active
+part in the real business of fighting, had on more than one occasion
+displayed her prowess in the field. A generation after her death, when
+all France had come to regard her as a martyr, a priest testified that
+"she would not use her sword, nor would she slay anyone"; but this
+testimony is certainly at variance with all that we know of the actual
+behavior of Jeanne in battle, and seems sufficiently contradicted by her
+own statement that the sword she used at Compiegne was "excellent,
+either for cutting or thrusting." She made the statement frankly,
+without any suspicion of its apparent inconsistency with her professions
+of a divine mission. We have no doubt that Jeanne delivered many a good
+stroke in deadly earnest, and we do not respect her the less for it. We
+need not even sorrow, but rather rejoice, at that display of honest
+indignation against the unruly and immoral in her camp, when she broke
+her sword of Saint Catherine over one rascal's head.
+
+Town after town had thrown open its gates at sight of the white banner
+and the Maid of Orleans; but Paris still remained in the hands of the
+English. Jeanne was averse to making any attack upon Paris; her heart
+misgave her, but she yielded to the will of the king. The assault that
+followed (September 8, 1429), in which she behaved with desperate but
+hopeless courage, fighting on in spite of a severe wound, resulted in a
+disastrous repulse, the French losing heavily. Jeanne, who had opposed
+making the attack, was nevertheless held responsible for the result.
+Faith in her was rudely shaken, and even those courtiers who had fawned
+upon her now said that her impiety--they, of course, were qualified to
+pronounce upon such a point--had been fitly rebuked in this defeat: had
+she not ventured to deliver the assault upon the anniversary of the
+Nativity of Our Lady? "The Armagnacs," says the journal of a pious
+citizen of Paris, "were so filled with wickedness and unbelief, that, on
+the word of a creature in the shape of a woman with them, called La
+Pucelle (what it might be God alone knows!), they conspired on the
+anniversary of the Nativity of Our Lady... to attack Paris."
+
+Jeanne, utterly disheartened by her defeat, and half believing that she
+had merited this rebuke from heaven, humbled herself before God and
+before the king, and renounced her arms, laying her sword upon the altar
+of Saint-Denis. But though willing to shift the blame for failures upon
+her, Charles was not willing to dispense with her services if there was
+anything more to be hoped from them. She was induced to take up arms
+again; but we will pass over in silence the details of her later valiant
+but hopeless service and speak only of her last feat of arms.
+
+The Burgundians, though their duke was already in secret correspondence
+with Charles, had laid siege to Compiegne. Jeanne, with a small body of
+troops succeeded in forcing her way into the town, and that same day
+(May 23, 1430) led a sortie that at first drove back the besiegers. The
+Burgundians rallied, however, and Jeanne's troops were beaten back into
+the town. As she herself, bringing up the rear in the retreat, turned to
+drive back a band of the pursuers that her troops might reach the gates
+in safety, she was left alone; and the drawbridge of Compiegne rose,
+cutting her off from rescue or from escape. Surrender, Jeanne, there is
+no hope for thee; France is weary of thee; for hast thou not done all
+that France could hope from thee? Jeanne herself had said that she
+feared nothing but treachery. Whatever the immediate motive of those who
+raised the drawbridge at Compiegne, whether they were bribed by the
+Burgundians or merely exasperated because the heroine had not performed
+miracles, the act was clear treachery, and the pitiful little moat of
+this town was the impassable barrier that shut Jeanne d'Arc out of that
+France she had saved.
+
+An archer of Picardy was her immediate captor, and he delivered her, for
+a price, to his commander, Jean de Luxembourg. A great prize was this
+witch who had all but ruined the English cause in France, and proud must
+have been her captor: his prisoner was a girl of eighteen. But had she
+not fallen into good hands? Jean de Luxembourg was not only a member of
+one of the most distinguished families of Europe, but he was a knight, a
+leader in that grand organization of chivalry whose first object and
+proudest boast was protection of the weak, and gentleness and courtesy
+toward women. As Michelet remarks: "It was a hard trial for the chivalry
+of the day." The age of chivalry was already gone, though the name was
+on the lips of all: chivalry, even if it could have withstood the
+phenomenal progress in the condition of the lower orders of
+society,--have we not said that the peasant brothers of Jeanne were
+ennobled by royal letters patent?--and the invention of firearms, which
+tended to equalize all men on the field of battle, could not have
+withstood the debasing influence of years of guerrilla warfare. The
+knight had not only lost his physical superiority on the battlefield,
+but he had lost something infinitely more precious--his lofty ideals.
+Knightly orders continued to be founded, but they were the amusements of
+dilettanti in honor and ancient custom. Furthermore, even had chivalry
+not faded from its theoretic brilliancy, it is entirely possible that
+Jeanne would have been deemed beyond the pale of its protection. As the
+leper was shunned, as the Jewish usurer was persecuted by mediaeval
+society, so was the witch outlawed by public sentiment; and it was as a
+witch that the English were resolved to treat the deliverer of Orleans.
+
+Confined at first in the camp at Margny, near Compiegne, Jeanne was
+subsequently removed to the Chateau de Beaulieu, near Loches, the very
+place from which Agnes Sorel took her title of Dame de Beaulieu. The
+Maid was removed again to Beaurevoir, and it is pleasant to record the
+kindly sympathy displayed by the ladies of Jean de Luxembourg's family,
+who ministered to her comfort, provided her with women's clothes, and
+did whatever charity suggested to calm her distressed mind. But nothing
+could reconcile Jeanne to captivity; she felt that she was in danger of
+falling into the hands of the English, and she yearned for an
+opportunity to succor Compiegne. In one of her attempted escapes she
+threw herself from a high tower, though her conscience warned her
+against the sin of self-destruction. Hurt in the fall, she was unable to
+make good her escape, and was taken and nursed back to health by the
+ladies of Luxembourg.
+
+Meanwhile, the great ones of the earth were haggling over the price
+which should be paid for their victim, and Charles VII. made no effort
+to save her. Jean de Luxembourg sold her to Philippe de Bourgogne, and
+he treated with the English representative. This representative has had
+heaped upon his head the contemptuous anathemas of historians, both
+French and English; nor is he undeserving of the most severe phrases yet
+coined to express reprobation. Pierre Cauchon--it is a wonder so few
+have thought of the swinish suggestiveness of the very name--was merely
+a time-serving priest whose shameless policy of intrigue had already got
+him made Bishop of Beauvais, and would soon, he fondly hoped, give him
+the archbishopric of Rouen. In furtherance of his ambitious projects he
+had become thoroughly English, and fawned upon the rich Cardinal
+Winchester; but though Winchester nominated him to the archbishopric,
+neither the Pope nor the cathedral chapter of Rouen would consent to
+receive him as archbishop. Cauchon, as Bishop of Beauvais, claimed the
+right to try the heretical sorceress who had been captured on the
+borders of the diocese. In the same document in which he preferred this
+claim he made offers, on behalf of the English, to buy his victim. A
+king's ransom, ten thousand livres in gold, was offered for Jeanne, and
+as refusal would have involved not only the loss of this sum, but the
+loss of English friendship, the Duke of Burgundy sold his captive, who
+was delivered up to the ecclesiastical authorities and the English party
+in November, 1430.
+
+Under the barbarous customs then in vogue it would not have been
+impossible for the English to put her to death under military law; the
+inviolability of prisoners of war was by no means an established
+principle among the nations. But La Pucelle's death alone would not
+suffice; she must first be discredited in the eyes of the world; it must
+be shown that the consecration of Charles VII. had been effected with
+the aid of one condemned by the laws of God and of the Church, that the
+consecration was, in fact, but an impious mockery of religious rites,
+because a sorceress had led him to the altar. For this reason it was
+determined to deliver Jeanne to the mercies of the ecclesiastical
+courts. Cauchon was rector of the University of Paris, and could command
+the assent of that body to whatever seemed to him expedient; the
+representative of the Inquisition, who seemed decidedly averse to having
+anything to do with the proceedings, was likewise overawed by Cauchon
+and by the English cardinal. All that remained to do was to constitute
+the court and to bring the accused before it for trial.
+
+Rouen was to be the scene of the trial, and here Cauchon began his
+proceedings early in January, 1431. The charge against Jeanne was to be
+the working of magic; but the acute and punctilious Norman lawyers
+picked so many flaws in the paltry charges and in the documents
+presented in their support, that Cauchon was compelled to change his
+intention, and substituted the charge of heresy. It was under this
+preposterous indictment that the pious Jeanne was brought face to face
+with her judges on February 21st. For months she had been kept in close
+confinement, loaded with fetters, and kept under the guardianship of
+men. The sturdy girl had lost much of her vigor, as, indeed, had been
+the intention of her captors. But though the body was weakened, the
+spirit was yet unbroken; and Jeanne met the accusing judges, whom she
+knew to be already resolved upon her destruction, with the same firmness
+and untutored practical sagacity that had marked her bearing in the
+first encounter with those who sought to entangle her in the subtleties
+of metaphysics and theology. Of metaphysics and theology she knew not so
+much as the names, but she had a clear head and a thorough understanding
+of the fundamental principles of justice and of faith. So long as her
+physical strength lasted, the most adroit and insinuating queries of the
+prosecution could not trap her into compromising answers. Counsel for
+the defendant there was none; her own wit must defend her in the contest
+with judges who were at the same time prosecutors.
+
+Being admonished by the insidious Cauchon to answer truly and without
+evasion or subterfuge whatever should be asked, she checkmated this move
+at once: "I do not know what you mean to question me about; you might
+ask me things which I would not tell you." She would speak the truth on
+all things, she said, and the whole truth, except on those things
+concerning her king or concerning her visions. Not till she had been
+brought before them for the third time, worn out by their persistence
+and by the increasing horrors of imprisonment, did she modify this so
+far as to consent to tell what she knew, but not all that she knew, and
+to answer unreservedly on points of faith. Never would she consent to
+testify against herself on the points which she saw that they wished to
+establish: "It is a common saying, even in the mouths of children, that
+people are often hanged for telling the truth." Complaining of the
+hardship of being kept in irons, she was told it was because she had
+attempted to escape. "It is true, and it is allowable for any prisoner."
+Asked to repeat those divinely sincere and simple prayers which
+constituted the main part of the faith she had learned as a little
+child, she pronounced herself quite willing to repeat the Lord's Prayer
+and the Hail Mary, if Bishop Cauchon would first hear her in confession,
+an office which he declined.
+
+Throughout the tedious, soul-racking trial, lasting, in various
+forms,--now before the whole court, now in her prison, now in private
+inquests,--from the end of February till the end of May, the same
+steadfastness and caution prevailed in her answers. She told them freely
+of her visions, for now her saints had come back to her and inspired
+her, as she said, to answer boldly. If she came from God, they asked,
+did she think herself in a state of grace, incapable of committing a
+mortal sin? "If I am not in a state of grace," she replied, "may God be
+pleased to receive me into it; if I am, may God be pleased to keep me in
+it." Not one of the theologians present could have devised an answer
+more truly orthodox, more truly Christian in spirit, or more
+discomfiting to the casuists. On this occasion the judges were struck
+dumb, and very prudently adjourned the court for that day. Not
+hesitating at any meanness, one of her persecutors asked whether Saint
+Michael appeared to her naked? She answered him in the very spirit and
+almost in the very words of the Scriptures, as we learn from the record:
+"Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested
+to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ of suitable robes
+which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the
+flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants." Again
+and again, questions were put to her, in answering which, if she had
+been tainted with the least suspicion of imposture, she would have been
+tempted to pretend to powers greater than she had: "Do Saint Catherine
+and Saint Margaret hate the English?" "They love what our Lord loves,
+and hate what He hates."
+
+Proof of her guilt, in the legal sense, there was none, and so much even
+the lawyers of Rouen recognized; but out of her own answers the
+ministers of the God of Justice were enabled, after months of juggling,
+to torture proof sufficient to convict her in their own eyes. When the
+wolf in AEsop's fable, seeks a pretext for devouring the lamb, we know
+from the beginning that that pretext will be found: "You have muddied
+the stream," cries the wolf, as he raises his head from drinking. "Nay,
+good sir, I am lower down the stream than you are." "If it was not you,
+it was one of your family." There was no hope for this lamb of France.
+"Never from the foundations of the earth," says De Quincey, "was there
+such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence
+and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess,
+peasant girl! Trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy
+flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's
+lightning to its mark,... confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and
+making dumb the oracles of falsehood!... 'Would you examine me as a
+witness against myself?' was the question by which many times she defied
+their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were
+irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the
+ridiculous charges against her."
+
+In the midst of the proceedings, about Palm Sunday, the poor girl fell
+ill, and there was some fear that through death she might escape the
+exemplary punishment they were preparing for her against the anticipated
+conviction. Her illness may have been chiefly mental and nervous
+exhaustion, helped on by what would have been to her one of the most
+severe trials, homesickness. This is the impression left upon our minds
+by Lamartine and by Michelet as well as by De Quincey: "A country girl,
+born on the skirts of a forest, and having ever lived in the open air of
+heaven, she was compelled to pass this fine Palm Sunday hi the depths of
+a dungeon." In the general rejoicing of Easter, while the bells of Rouen
+steeples rang forth the glad tidings of salvation for all, of relief
+from pain and sorrow, there lay in the castle dungeon a peasant girl,
+sick in body, sick in mind, dreaming of the fresh green fields, and the
+forests just now beginning to put forth their tender leaves, hearing the
+bells of her own far-away church in Domremy, and the homely talk of old
+friends as they plodded by on their way to that church. She woke in the
+morning with the sound of the bells in her ears, and on that holy
+morning, as oh many another for many weary weeks, there were the double
+chains upon her limbs padlocked to a transverse beam at the foot of her
+rough bed. And in the room, watching every move and torturing her with
+coarse jests or terrifying her with yet more cruel threats, were four or
+five soldiers, no woman near to minister to her wants or to shield her
+modesty. With such torture, with the added mental torture of almost
+daily cross-questioning whose object was to force her into the jaws of
+death, is it any wonder that Jeanne was ill, well-nigh reduced to the
+frenzy of despair? Yet this forlorn creature, even when confronted with
+the threat of actual torture, never made an admission that would
+seriously conflict with the simple statement of her faith and of her
+mission which she had volunteered at the very beginning. Refusing to
+retract anything, she yet signified her willingness to submit to the
+authority of the Church. This was all that Cauchon had been able to
+accomplish after more than two months' labor. A highly theatrical
+ceremony was arranged to dignify what they called her formal abjuration.
+Two scaffolds were erected in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen. On one sat
+Cardinal Winchester, Cauchon, and the other dignitaries. On the other,
+chained hand and foot and fastened at the waist to a post, surrounded by
+clerks who might take down any chance words and by the ministers of
+torture with their dread instruments, stood the poor child whom they had
+dragged from the prison. After a tedious and impious harangue by a
+famous preacher, whose false statements she would not listen to in
+silence, Jeanne consented to sign an abjuration which did not affect the
+validity of her claim. When the notary presented the pen to her
+unpractised fingers she smiled and blushed a little at her ignorance and
+awkwardness. She drew a circle upon the parchment at the place
+indicated, and then, the notary guiding her hand, made a cross within
+the circle. Then the Church admitted her to its _grace_, and the
+sentence was read to her: imprisonment for the rest of her life, "on the
+bread of grief and the water of anguish."
+
+And so, being now received into the mercy of the Church, she was
+conducted back to her prison. It is a relief, in the midst of this cruel
+scene, to hear some expressing compassion and imploring her to sign the
+abjuration to save herself, though some there are who clamor loudly:
+"Let her be burnt!" The test of her sincerity in the new penitence was
+to be her willingness to wear garments befitting her sex. She had clung
+to her man's attire as the best, and indeed the only, safeguard to her
+honor, constantly threatened by her keepers and even attempted, we are
+told, by one brutal knight. Relying upon the good faith of her
+ecclesiastical custodians, now that she had done what they asked, Jeanne
+consented to put on the women's clothes they gave her. But Cauchon had
+no intention of allowing her to escape the last punishment. His judges
+had assured the English, who complained that Jeanne would not be burned
+after all: "Do not fear, we shall soon have her again."
+
+On May 24th she had signed her act of submission and had put aside the
+costume forbidden by the Church. On the morning of the 27th, when she
+wished to rise and dress herself, the guard had taken away her robes and
+left but the old forbidden garments. She expostulated, and at first
+refused to get up; but being at length constrained to do so, she put on
+the man's apparel. The wolf had made good and sufficient pretext for
+devouring the lamb; technically, Jeanne might be considered to have
+relapsed, and with the old dress to have resumed the old faults
+reprobated by Holy Church.
+
+The judges were at once notified of Jeanne's disobedience, and Cauchon
+rejoiced that "she was caught." The next day, being Monday after
+Trinity, he returned to interrogate the prisoner upon the matter of the
+change of dress. Her courage had returned with the realization that they
+had not dealt fairly with her and meant to find pretexts for her
+destruction. She would neither excuse herself for again assuming her
+warrior garments nor consent to return to those prescribed by custom for
+her sex. As long as she was guarded by men, she said, it was more seemly
+and more safe that she should be dressed as a man; if they would put her
+in a safe and proper prison, she would submit to whatever the Church
+decreed. But Cauchon knew that her death was deemed requisite by his
+English friends, and he was determined to give her no such fair
+opportunity. On Tuesday a fresh tribunal was hastily constituted to pass
+upon the deplorable relapse into error of one for whom, to shield her
+from death, the Church had done all that in it lay. Needless to say,
+this tribunal, a mere mockery of a court, decided on the evidence
+submitted that Jeanne was guilty of fatal disobedience to the Church and
+that she must suffer death as a heretic. It was to be but a step from
+passing sentence to the execution of that sentence, for Cauchon's
+masters were already impatient at the long delay.
+
+The next morning a priest was sent to Jeanne to notify her of the
+sentence. One sudden burst of feeling, half fear, half indignation, for
+a moment overwhelmed the courage of the girl. She wept bitterly when
+told that she must prepare herself to die by fire that very day: "Alas!
+will they treat me so cruelly and horribly! Must my body, pure as from
+birth, never corrupted or soiled in sin, be this day consumed and
+reduced to ashes! Oh, oh! I had rather be beheaded seven times over than
+burnt on this wise.... Oh! I appeal to God, the great Judge of all, for
+the wrongs and injuries done me!" And then this heretic, this sorceress,
+asked that she be allowed to confess and to receive the Communion, that
+holy symbol of the universal brotherhood of the followers of Christ.
+Cauchon did not, perhaps dared not, deny her this; but he wished to
+divest the ceremony of part of its pomp. When the Eucharist was brought
+to him without stole and without lights, the courageous monk Martin
+l'Advenu refused to administer it thus, and sent a complaint to the
+cathedral; whereupon the chapter, always ready to spite Cauchon, sent an
+escort of priests and acolytes, who chanted litanies as they passed
+through the streets and conjured the kneeling people to pray for Jeanne.
+
+By nine o'clock the victim had received the Communion, and was dressed
+in female attire and placed on a cart, ready to start for the place of
+execution. Brother Martin and the merciful Austin friar Isambart
+accompanied her on that dreadful journey of the cart through the streets
+of Rouen to the old fish market. If there had been any tendency to
+sympathetic manifestations on the part of the crowd, the guard of eight
+hundred English soldiers would have sufficed to suppress them; and
+Jeanne, who had now given up hope of deliverance, of succor from her
+king, from her divine guardians, was heard only to ejaculate: "Rouen,
+Rouen! must I then die here?" In the market place had been erected two
+platforms, one for the cardinal and dignitaries, the other for the
+prisoner, the bailli, the judges, and the preacher who was to enhance
+the bitterness of death by rehearsing the particulars of her guilt. But
+what is that lofty scaffolding of wood and plaster standing apart? It is
+the altar upon which the sacrifice is to be offered, built high that all
+may see the tortures of an innocent maid as the flames mount rapidly up
+its flimsy mass. A sermon began the proceedings, the eloquent Master
+Nicholas Mildy outdoing himself upon the text: "When one limb of the
+Church is sick, the whole Church is sick." After him came that pitiful
+tool, the Bishop of Beauvais, who exhorted Jeanne to repentance and to
+forgiveness of her enemies. There was small need of this, for Jeanne
+knelt and prayed so humbly, so earnestly, so pitifully, that all were
+moved to tears, while she asked the priests to pray for her soul and to
+say a Mass for her. Then Cauchon, in spite of his tears, read to her the
+act of condemnation, concluding: "Therefore, we pronounce you to be a
+rotten limb, and as such to be lopped off from the Church. We deliver
+you over to the secular power, _praying it at the same time to mitigate
+its sentence, and to spare you death_, and the mutilation of your
+members." The unblushing hypocrisy of this recommendation to mercy, with
+the pyre already reared in full sight of all, could only be surpassed by
+that of the diabolical fiction of ecclesiastical law as administered by
+the Inquisition; viz., that Holy Church executed no capital sentence,
+merely handed its victim over to the "secular arm."
+
+So now Jeanne, no longer under the merciful protection of the Church,
+was delivered over to the civil authorities and conducted to the top of
+the pyre. She asked for a cross; a tender-hearted Englishman handed her
+two sticks which he had hastily fashioned into a rude cross, and Jeanne
+kissed the simple emblem and put it in her bosom. But Isambart fetched a
+crucifix for her from the very altar of the neighboring church of
+Saint-Sauveur, and this she kissed passionately, desiring him to hold it
+aloft where she might see it to the last as the smoke and flame mounted.
+Isambart ascended the pile with her, and the executioner fastened her
+body to the post in the centre. With her eyes fixed upon the image of
+Him who died for the world, mayhap she did not note the lying placard
+above her head: "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater." In this hour of
+supreme trial no moment of fatal weakness came to deprive her of our
+absolute admiration. She spoke no word of deserved reproach against her
+rude executioners, against the soldiers who had hustled her across the
+market place, against the miserable Charles for whom she suffered all
+these tortures and who had abandoned her. "Whether I have done well, or
+whether I have done ill, my King is not to blame; it was not he who
+counselled me." Even the miserable Cauchon was greeted, as he hovered
+about the foot of the pile to catch her last words, with nothing more
+bitter than: "Bishop! Bishop! I die through you!... Had you confined me
+in the prisons of the Church, this would not have happened."
+
+While the good monk lingers by her side, pouring into that saintly ear
+such words of comfort and hope as faith may suggest, the executioner
+applies his torch and Jeanne sees the flames rush upward. "Jesus!" she
+cries, then exhorts the monk, "Fly, father! and when the flame shall
+cover me hold aloft the crucifix, that I may see it as I die, and repeat
+for me your holy words until the end." She thought of others, not of
+herself, even in this hour: who shall impugn her courage, or say she
+knew not how to die as nobly as she had lived? In the first spasm of
+pain, as the flames touched her body, she shrieked. After this but a few
+broken sentences came to the ears of those at the foot of the pile,
+sometimes appeals to the saints who had guided her, sometimes a
+despairing cry of anguish not to be suppressed. And then in the midst of
+the gathering flames they saw her head fall forward on her breast as she
+moaned, "Jesus!"
+
+The voice that had aroused France from her lethargy was hushed forever;
+the great spirit of Jeanne d'Arc had gone to God, whence it came. Shall
+we stand by the smoking pyre till the last embers turn gray and cold,
+till Winchester orders the handful of ashes that remained to be swept
+into the Seine? Or shall we turn away, sick with horror, filled already
+with vain regret of the deed done, as did many in that dense crowd of
+her enemies? "We have burnt a saint!" cries one. "I saw a dove fly from
+her mouth and wing its way to heaven!" avers another.
+
+Those who are actors in what the world learns to designate as great
+historical crises seldom realize the magnitude of the events of which
+they are immediate witnesses. In spite of the superstitious terror of a
+few and the pity of many, it is probable that not one in the great crowd
+hurrying away from the scene of Jeanne d'Arc's martyrdom realized that
+she was a martyr or that the cause for which she had died was near its
+hour of triumph. Their fear was but of one whom they deemed a favored
+ally of the powers of evil; their pity was but for one whom they deemed
+a simple girl, and for whose anguish they grieved as they would have
+grieved for that of their own daughters or sisters. The pity of it, that
+one so young, so gentle, so innocent of worldly taint should suffer this
+cruel death! After all, 'this is the truest compassion, dispensed with
+even justice, without regard to person or rank, without thought as to
+whether the sufferer be the repentant thief or the Divine Master upon
+the Cross, the nameless woman taken in adultery or this girl of Lorraine
+who was to be acknowledged as the greatest woman in French history. Yet
+for us the knowledge that heartless political schemers had tortured to
+the death a woman becomes knowledge of far more moment when we know that
+Jeanne d'Arc was the woman, and our indignation against her persecutors
+is enhanced in proportion to our estimate of the greatness and the
+goodness of the heroine.
+
+In the course of our narrative we have taken occasion, from time to
+time, to present estimates of the character of Jeanne d'Arc; perhaps it
+may be well, now that her meteoric career has ended in the flames of the
+market place of Rouen, to consider once more the character of this
+heroine in its main features. The results of her activity in French
+history, though not in all cases immediately apparent, were so
+marvellous that our judgment may well be unduly influenced. On the one
+hand, in our desire to emphasize the extraordinary nature of her deeds,
+we may tend to depreciate the actual abilities of Jeanne; on the other,
+the glory of the deeds may blind us to the shortcomings of the woman.
+
+In her own day, and especially after her death, her contemporaries in
+France had begun to regard her as a saint, and a veritable cult of
+Jeanne d'Arc soon grew up, encrusting the simple facts of her story with
+endless and fantastic arabesques of legend. Charles VII., who had
+abandoned the woman in her hour of need, who had made no earnest effort
+to succor the leader to whom he owed his crown, entered with
+considerable energy and enthusiasm into the cult of the saint. It was
+due to his initiative that, in 1455, Pope Calixtus III. gave order that
+Jeanne's trial be revised. It was at best but cold and tardy gratitude
+on Charles's part, this rehabilitation of the memory of the girl whom he
+had used and then dropped when she was no longer serviceable; but we
+must in justice say that he in every way furthered the investigation
+into the facts of an episode in his life which he must have now regarded
+with poignant regret and shame, more poignant as the glory of the lost
+heroine was brought into full light. In this exhaustive inquiry into the
+career of Jeanne d'Arc witnesses from far and near were examined and
+documents rescued from oblivion, and at the end of the eight months'
+proceedings the new court, with a mass of testimony before it which
+fills volumes, reversed the partisan decision of the court of Rouen,
+acquitted the heroine of the false charges brought against her, and not
+only vindicated her honor, but pronounced favorably upon her claims to
+sanctity. Jeanne was already canonized in popular imagination, and
+though the official sanction of Rome was long in the granting, in the
+hearts of all France she had a veneration far more precious than any
+ever vouchsafed to a saint.
+
+Jeanne d'Arc did not regard herself as a saint, nor was she free from
+human faults of temper and of conduct that accord but ill with sanctity.
+Her outbursts of wholesome wrath, some one or two of which we have
+noted, mark her as that which she was, no patient martyr, but a strong,
+healthy woman, normal in many things, and blessed with much practical
+sense, in spite of her visions. It was this very fact in Jeanne's life
+that enabled her enemies to seize upon the manifestations of her
+likeness to other women of her class and time and to draw Jeanne as but
+a common, coarse, immodest woman. In the disgusting Joan of
+Shakespeare's _Henry VI._ (if it be his), and in the shameless wanton of
+Voltaire's _Pucelle d'Orleans_ there is just this much of truth to life,
+that the true Jeanne was a peasant lass and, in all things not directly
+connected with her great deeds, spoke and acted as one of her class
+would have acted and spoken, with far greater freedom than would be
+consistent with modesty in a more cultured society. We do not mean to
+say that there is the least justification or excuse for these attempts
+to defame Jeanne d'Arc; to condemn her as a common virago because she
+sometimes uttered her commands with too little regard for propriety in
+speech would be like condemning Washington because he could and did, on
+occasion, swear a good round oath. But the proper defence of Jeanne
+d'Arc against Shakespeare and Voltaire is neither to vilify them nor to
+obscure the human side of her character and exalt her to something
+altogether faultless and divine, something altogether "too bright and
+good for human nature's daily food."
+
+With or without the poetic praises of biographers, Jeanne d'Arc deserves
+her place as, all things considered, one of the most remarkable figures
+in the world's history. In spite of human defects, she is "the one pure
+figure which rises out of the greed, the lust, the selfishness and
+unbelief of the time." How can we draw our sketch to a conclusion better
+than in the words of a great Englishman, himself in some things the
+arch-prophet of divine enthusiasm? In his comment upon Schiller's
+_Jungfrau von Orleans_, Carlyle says: "Feelings so deep and earnest as
+hers can never be an object of ridicule: whoever pursues a purpose of
+any sort with such fervid devotedness is entitled to awaken emotions, at
+least of a serious kind, in the hearts of others. Enthusiasm puts on a
+different shape in every different age: always in some degree sublime,
+often it is dangerous; its very essence is a tendency to error and
+exaggeration; yet it is the fundamental quality of strong souls; the
+true nobility of blood, in which all greatness of thought or action has
+its rise. Quicquid vult valde vult is ever the first and surest test of
+mental capability. This peasant girl, who felt within her such fiery
+vehemence of resolution that she could subdue the minds of kings and
+captains to her will and lead armies on to battle, conquering, till her
+country was cleared of its invaders, must evidently have possessed the
+elements of a majestic character.... Jeanne d'Arc must have been a
+creature of shadowy yet far-glancing dreams, of unutterable feelings, of
+'thoughts that wandered through eternity.' Who can tell the trials and
+the triumphs, the splendors and the terrors, of which her simple spirit
+was the scene!... Hers were errors, but errors which a generous soul
+alone could have committed, and which generous souls would have done
+more than pardon. Her darkness and delusions were of the understanding
+only; but they make the radiance of her heart more touching and
+apparent; as clouds are gilded by the orient light into something more
+beautiful than azure itself."
+
+Great and pure and noble was thy faith, Maid of Orleans! And of a truth
+it wrought miracles, for thy brave and steadfast heart divined what was
+to be done and faltered not by the wayside. And yet, adoring thee as a
+saint, let us love thee as a simple girl, "Jehanne la bonne Lorraine"!
+
+        "Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys
+        Harembourges, qui tint le Mayne,
+        Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
+        Qu'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen:
+        Ou sont-ilz, Vierge Souveraine?
+          Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE RISE OF THE MONARCHY
+
+HISTORIANS, having a predilection for exactness, are concerned to find
+dates not only for kings and queens and battles and treaties, but for
+those great changes in the manners and morals of mankind which begin
+unconsciously, are wrought out in silence, and present themselves to the
+historian as accomplished revolutions before he is at all aware that
+anything of moment is going on. A revolution of this kind was in
+progress throughout Christendom in the fifteenth century; and its
+results are so astonishing, so bewildering in their magnitude and in
+their infinite ramifications that we resort to figurative language and
+call the movement the Renaissance, the Revival of Learning. It is,
+indeed, a new birth, a new life, rather newer and altogether more
+astonishing than any mere return of the learning of the ancients could
+have been; but the leaven in the decaying mass of feudalism operated
+slowly, and did not come to full power until long after the period which
+must be a limit for this book; therefore, we can but note certain
+significant facts in the mighty process which was to transform the
+feudal lady of the chateau into the lady of the court and of the
+brilliant literary salon, to substitute a Catherine de Medicis, or a
+Marguerite de Navarre, or a Madame de La Fayette, for an Eleanor of
+Guienne, a Mahaut d'Artois, or a Christine de Pisan. As nearly as can be
+determined, the age of feudalism ends in the fifteenth century; but the
+soul of the old civilization leaves its body imperceptibly and enters
+into that of the new: it "melts, and makes no noise,
+
+        As virtuous men pass mildly away,
+          And whisper to their souls to go,
+        Whilst some of their sad friends do say
+          Now his breath goes, and some say no."
+
+Jeanne d'Arc herself, we have said in the preceding chapter, was no
+product of chivalry, found no chivalry to shield her. The old was
+already in her time yielding place to the new; for during the fifteenth
+century feudalism as well as chivalry was going to its death in France
+and in nearly all Europe. In France the civil wars had not only
+demoralized chivalry, they had also served to sever the intimate ties
+that bound the feudal lord and his family to the soil of their fief
+almost as rigidly as the villain was bound. Some families were utterly
+destroyed, some sought new lands, and found them in parts of the country
+far distant from their ancient holdings. With all his theoretically
+arbitrary power, the old baron, reared amid the peasants he was to
+govern, felt a certain kinship with them, and was often regardful of
+their time-honored customs and privileges, forgoing in their favor what
+arbitrary despotism or caprice suggested. No such ties bound the new
+nobles to their new vassals; the hold of the feudal lord upon his
+vassals was weakened, as was their influence upon him. Many new families
+had risen into prominence, and kings no longer hesitated to ennoble
+parvenus, a sure sign that the solidarity of the ancient nobility of the
+soil was broken. This had come to pass in France by the time the great
+Louis XI. ascended the throne, not a generation after Jeanne d'Arc, and
+the same process was going on in England through the Wars of the Roses.
+Louis was the determined enemy of feudalism, which he would have
+uprooted utterly. Much he did uproot; more he would have done, had he
+lived.
+
+In the midst of this generation of struggles between the king and the
+faltering remnants of feudalism there are two or three instances in
+which the women as well as the men of the middle class deserve mention.
+Before we deal with the short and sad career of the last of the great
+house of Bourgogne, Marie, daughter of Charles le temeraire, we may
+glance at the simple story of a woman who defended Beauvais from this
+same Charles.
+
+The danger from England had passed; there was no longer need of a Jeanne
+d'Arc to drive out the insolent _Goddems_; but a new enemy was found for
+France in the person of that great Duke of Burgundy whom modern history
+has named Charles the Bold, more properly Charles the Rash, or, as his
+contemporaries first called him, the Terrible, "that wild bull wearing a
+crown, that wild boar who rushed straight ahead, his eyes shut." In the
+spring of 1472, while Louis XI was intent upon reducing to submission
+the rebellious Duke of Brittany, Charles le temeraire, impatient at the
+tricky diplomacy which baffled him, declared war upon France and marched
+at once into Picardy with a great army, ravaging and burning as he went.
+Louis, unwilling to be diverted from his attempt upon the Duke of
+Brittany, whom he was holding fast in his grip, could spare few troops,
+and gave orders that the small towns be abandoned and resistance be
+concentrated in the larger cities. The brave little town of Nesle was
+the first to offer a determined but hopeless resistance to the enraged
+Burgundian: Nesle was carried by assault, its defenders put to the sword
+or mutilated by the lopping off of their right hands. The very church
+ran with blood as Charles rode into it, commending the savage butchery
+of the inhabitants by his soldiers.
+
+Beauvais was the next place of importance in his path, and the terrible
+news of the slaughter and the burning at Nesle was enough to inspire
+terror among its citizens. Yet these honest citizens, who had enjoyed
+liberal charters from France, were moved by a spirit of patriotism that
+is the best testimony to the fair treatment they had received from the
+subtle Louis. The fortifications of the town were antiquated, in no wise
+adapted to resist the powerful artillery that Charles was bringing with
+him, even had they been in good repair; as it was, they were going to
+ruin. And even had their walls been good and strong, the citizens had no
+garrison to help them to defend the town, and no munitions of war. A
+general meeting of the citizens debated the question of absolute
+submission, or of a resistance which, after the fate of Nesle, they felt
+must be to the bitter end. The vote was unanimous for resistance; they
+would do their duty and hold out for the king, though the last man
+should perish beneath the ruins. At once they began repairing the walls,
+closing up gates and posterns, and barricading the streets.
+
+On the 27th of June, the bell of the great cathedral sounded the tocsin:
+the Burgundian army was in sight. And against this great army of
+disciplined soldiers must stand the volunteer defenders of the city. The
+assault began at once, after the Burgundian herald had summoned the
+town: "In the name of the Duke, I summon the captain and the inhabitants
+of the city to submit humbly to his pleasure."
+
+Upon the walls the citizens had piled stones to hurl upon the
+assailants, and pots of hot oil and hot water were at hand to be emptied
+on their heads. Foremost in this work were the women of the town, while
+the men were left free to use their crossbows, arquebuses, axes. One
+figure stands out prominently in this band of heroic women; it is that
+of a young girl of eighteen, who constitutes herself leader, marshals
+her companions, and drives from their homes timid maids and matrons,
+urging them on to bear stones to the ramparts, if they will do no more.
+
+Like the great savior of France, this girl is named Jeanne; like her,
+too, she is of lowly birth, a good, honest girl of the people. Jeanne
+Laisne, daughter of a simple artisan, Mathieu Laisne, was born about
+1454, in Beauvais. She was a wool-carder, one used to earning her own
+bread, and hence full of the energy and courage born of independence,
+not yet broken by years of severe toil. She was comely, too; perhaps an
+indispensable requirement in one who would win the unrestricted praise
+of the historians of a gallant race. Whether beautiful or not, Jeanne
+was a very Deborah of her class, inspired with that fervent love of
+home, of _patrie_, which is innate in every good woman, and which is
+sometimes strongest in those who have to thank the _patrie_ for no
+favors of fortune. No heavenly spirits guided her, no prophecies proceed
+from her; her sole inspiration was courage and the determination to help
+in the defence of Beauvais. It would have been so easy for her to assume
+the role of a Jeanne d'Arc; she might even have pretended to be La
+Pucelle come to life again, as did several impostors who had recently
+won temporary credit, notably one who was brought to Charles VII.,
+pretended to recognize him by divine inspiration, and confessed her
+imposture only when the king received her in good faith and referred to
+"the secret between me and thee." It is to the credit of this new Jeanne
+that she made no false pretensions, but simply served her native city
+and lived her life as merely the Jeanne whom all had known, and whom all
+respected.
+
+Of her deeds during the siege there is not much to tell in detail,
+though it was her spirit and energy that insured the cooeperation of
+other women. At first she and her band of amazons aided the men so
+effectually that the Burgundians were repulsed with heavy loss. But
+Charles was bent upon carrying the town by assault. His soldiers were
+urged on to the attack day after day, and still they saw the women of
+the town battling against them and were driven back from the walls,
+which the artillery, short of ammunition, could not breach. They carried
+one of the gates; Jeanne and her fellow townsmen fired it, and the fire
+burned so fiercely that for a week approach on that side was cut off.
+
+On the 9th of July, says the Canon of Beauvais, Jean de Bonneuil, "the
+Burgundians began the assault upon the gates of the Hotel-Dieu and of
+Bresle, in which assault the women bore (around the walls) the body of
+Saint Agadresme, patron saint of Beauvais." But the repulse of this
+assault was not to be due to the miraculous intervention of Saint
+Agadresme; it was again Jeanne Laisne, now surnamed Hachette, from the
+ax she wielded, who saved the city. "It is not to be forgotten,"
+continues the chronicler, "that in the said assault, while the
+Burgundians were setting up their ladders and mounting upon the walls,
+one of the said women of Beauvais, called Jeanne Laisne, did, without
+other aid or arm, seize and snatch away from one of the said Burgundians
+the standard which he bore and carry it to the church of the Jacobins,
+where was the shrine of Saint Agadresme." Jeanne had remained on the
+ramparts while the enemy came on to the assault; and as the standard
+bearer planted the Burgundian flag in a breach, she smote him with her
+ax, so that he fell back into the fosse. Others hurried to her aid, and
+repelled once more the disheartened assailants.
+
+Meanwhile, succor had come for Beauvais; at first only a handful of
+men-at-arms from Noyon, then at last a large body of troops under the
+best leaders in France effected an entrance into the town, and enabled
+it to withstand an assault lasting from dawn until noon, in which the
+duke sacrificed scores of his men to no purpose. Not till he found his
+army too much depleted and discouraged for further offensive operations,
+however, did Charles retire from before Beauvais, burning and pillaging
+as he marched toward Normandy. On July 22nd the besiegers were gone.
+
+The heroism of Jeanne Hachette, as everyone now called her, had proved
+contagious: "All the women of the town, high and low, showed themselves
+to be so valiant during this siege that they surpassed in boldness the
+men of other towns." It was to the women, so all were willing to admit,
+that the preservation of Beauvais had been due; and now it was for
+Louis, as well as for the citizens, to make some visible and worthy
+acknowledgment of the debt. Louis, who, says Michelet, "in his devout
+speculations... often took the saints and Our Lady for partners, keeping
+an open account with them, and trading for profit or loss, (thinking) by
+charities... by petty sums in advance, to secure their interest for some
+capital stroke," Louis had vowed a whole "town of silver" for the safety
+of Beauvais, and abstention from all flesh until the vow should be
+fulfilled. With all his superstition, and all his meanness and harshness
+to the nobles, he would do unexpectedly generous things to reward and to
+encourage the commons, whom he loved and on whom he relied when noble
+lords might play him false. In the present instance he granted special
+privileges to the women of Beauvais; and his ordinances to that effect
+are curious in that they attempt to propitiate Saint Agadresme--who
+might be useful in connection with the "open account" mentioned
+above--and at the same time to offer more substantial rewards to the
+wives of Beauvais.
+
+The first of these ordinances, dated 1473, establishes an annual
+procession in honor of Saint Agadresme and of the deliverance of the
+city, and specially exempts the women of Beauvais from the operation of
+the sumptuary laws. After rehearsing the most dramatic incident of the
+siege, and praising the _tres grande audace, constance et vertu,...
+oultre existimation du sexe feminin_, the text of the edict continues:
+"(The King) decrees that every year a procession be held, at the cost of
+our receipt and domains in the said city; and we order that henceforth
+forever the women in this procession shall precede the men and march
+immediately after the priests upon that day; and furthermore, they (the
+women) may, upon the day of their weddings or at any other times that it
+may please them, wear and adorn themselves with any raiment, ornaments,
+or jewels (that they may desire), without being subject to question,
+reproof, or prosecution, no matter of what rank of life they may be."
+
+More interesting to us, because more directly concerning the heroine
+herself, is the edict from which we learn of the special favors granted
+her. Beginning with a recital of the brave deeds done at Beauvais, and
+especially of the _bonne et vertueuse resistance_ of _notre chiere et
+amee Jeanne Laisne, fille de Mathieu Laisne_, the king's edict proceeds:
+"For these reasons, and also because of and in favor of the marriage of
+Colin Pilon and (Jeanne), which marriage was, by our help, arranged for,
+agreed upon, and celebrated, and also for divers other reasons and
+considerations, we have granted and now do grant, by special grace, in
+these present letters, that the said Colin Pilon, and Jeanne, his wife,
+each one of them, shall be and remain for life exempt and free from all
+taxes that are and that may be in the future imposed and exacted in our
+name throughout our kingdom, whether for the maintenance or keep of our
+armies and soldiers or for any other cause whatsoever, and (they shall
+also be exempt) from the duties of watch and ward, wheresoever in our
+kingdom they may take up their abode. Given at Senlis, this 22nd day of
+February, in the year of grace one thousand four hundred and
+seventy-four."
+
+It will be seen from this that Jeanne was already married, and that the
+king himself had taken some sort of personal interest in her case,
+supplying the very necessary _dot_ for the bride. She had not sought an
+alliance out of her own class, for Colin Pilon was a simple man-at-arms,
+who did not live long to enjoy either the love of his wife or the favor
+of the king, for he fell at the siege of Nancy, in 1477. A few years
+later, Jeanne married a cousin, one Fourquet, a soldier of fortune, at
+one time in the personal guard of the king. Henceforth nothing more is
+known of her, not even the date of her death. But popular fancy
+associated her so intimately with the siege of Beauvais that, be her
+real surname what it might, she was always Jeanne Hachette; and even in
+the nineteenth century a certain Pierre Fourquet d'Hachette, claiming
+descent from the humble heroine, received a pension from Charles X. In
+Beauvais, too, her name and the memory of her good service were kept
+alive not only by the annual parade on the festival of Saint Agadresme,
+but also by a faded, ancient standard, borne by the young girls in the
+procession, at other times carefully guarded among the treasures of the
+city. It was a standard of white damasked cloth, bearing figures and
+mottoes in gilt and colored paints. Even now one can decipher the
+haughty device of Charles le temeraire: _Je l'ay emprins_ (I have
+undertaken it), and beside it the emblems of the great order of the
+Golden Fleece. It is the very standard that the girl snatched from the
+Burgundian soldier more than four centuries ago.
+
+The story of Jeanne Hachette is but an episode, of course; but in
+reading it we should remember that, however small the part she played in
+the great history of the world, she had one rare trait, a trait often
+distinctive of the best figures in history, though not always of the
+most notable--modesty. Like Jeanne d'Arc, her task once accomplished she
+was content to be what she had been before; more fortunate than that
+other Jeanne, she lived to see herself honored, and was not spoiled
+thereby any more than Jeanne d'Arc was spoiled by her far greater
+triumphs.
+
+If Jeanne Hachette was a representative of that class now about to
+assume greater importance in the life of France, namely the artisans,
+the unfortunate daughter of Charles le temeraire was, in her character
+as well as in the events of her life, as surely representative of
+disappearing feudalism and chivalry. Marie de Bourgogne was all her life
+but the plaything of a court that would use her in its pageants and in
+its schemes of aggrandizement with utter disregard of what might be her
+personal preferences. Reared amidst surroundings that suggested the pomp
+and glory of chivalry and were eloquent of feminine dependence if not of
+feminine inferiority, she was suddenly left to cope with one of the
+ablest and one of the most unscrupulous politicians in history.
+
+Marie de Bourgogne was born at Brussels in 1457, being the first child
+born of the union of Isabelle de Bourbon and the haughty young Count de
+Charolais, who had been most unwilling to espouse this bride of his
+father's choice and who yet made a devoted and faithful husband. When
+Marie was born she was still but the daughter of the Count de Charolais,
+for ten years more of life remained for the worn out old Philippe le
+Bon. Still, she was prospective heiress of the great duchy of Burgundy,
+though none could yet foresee that she was the only hope of the great
+family that had made itself, in the hundred years of its existence, the
+most dangerous enemy, the most indispensable ally of France, nay, even
+the rival of France among the great powers of Europe.
+
+The little countess was but eight years of age when her mother died,
+scarcely old enough to appreciate the loss, except perhaps to grieve
+that she must be reared by a great lady of her grandfather's court, the
+Countess of Crevecoeur. Three years more, and she had to take part in
+the greeting given to her father's second wife, Margaret of York. Little
+could Marie have understood of the political significance of this union
+which united the fortunes of the house of Burgundy with those of a
+family whose brief ascendency was marked by almost continual war and by
+political crimes of the darkest hue: the brothers of her stepmother were
+the handsome voluptuary, Edward IV., "false, fleeting, perjured
+Clarence, that stabbed" young Edward of Lancaster "in the field by
+Tewkesbury," and the dark-minded Richard of Gloucester. It was a union
+of sinister omen for Charles, and one that had been opposed by his
+father: no good did or could come of it for Charles, and yet, to spite
+France, he persevered in his design, and brought Marie to take her small
+part in the brilliant reception accorded Margaret at Bruges. Marie must
+have witnessed and enjoyed the great show, and the famous tournament of
+the _perron d'or_ (golden beam), in which her father condescended to
+break a lance or two in honor of his bride; but she is hardly mentioned
+in the glowing accounts of these festivities, in which the ancient
+glories of chivalry were revived and surpassed. She was but a daughter,
+and though her father loved her it was only natural that he should yet
+hope for a son who might wear his ducal coronet.
+
+But the years passed, and still there was no son: Mademoiselle de
+Bourgogne seemed fated to wear that ducal coronet. Charles grew in
+power, in arrogance, in ambition; it was to be no longer a mere coronet,
+but a crown; he would found a new dynasty that would eclipse that of the
+elder branch of the Valois; at one time the very crown was made ready
+and exposed to the admiring yet fearful eyes of his future subjects.
+Marie, who had grown into a handsome if not beautiful girl, carefully
+trained in all the accomplishments that befitted her rank, became a
+personage of great importance in the ambitious schemes of her father.
+According to the custom of princes, her name was used as a lure in
+securing desirable alliances; and her wishes were but little regarded in
+the selection of her future husband. She was merely a sort of asset to
+be reckoned among the other properties of which Charles might dispose to
+the highest bidder in furtherance of his projects. Her charms would
+naturally be set forth to the best advantage, therefore, in the pages of
+loyal Burgundian chroniclers, and in the midst of the diplomatic
+bargaining we forget not only that Marie was a girl, with at least some
+girlish fancies and preferences and romantic dreams, but we fail to
+distinguish the actual features of the girl. If one may judge from the
+portraits, Marie could not have been really a beauty; though there are
+upon the face the indefinable marks of high breeding, its lines are too
+heavy, moulded too obviously on the pattern of the features of her
+redoubtable father; above all, there is that heavy lip and protruding
+jaw, so very noticeable in her descendants as to become a distinguishing
+family mark, albeit they call it Austrian, not Burgundian. But she was a
+comely girl; besides, would suitors hang back because the richest
+heiress in Europe was not at the same time a Venus?
+
+Charles met with no difficulty in finding suitors for his daughter's
+hand; there was merely the embarrassment of choice among so many who
+might be considered or who considered themselves eligible. At length, in
+1473, Marie was betrothed to Nicholas of Calabria. But Nicholas died,
+and Marie was again to be disposed of; the betrothal had been too
+absolutely a matter of politics to justify any delay in seeking a new
+husband now that death had removed Nicholas. It happened that just at
+this time Charles was very eager to propitiate the empire, in
+furtherance of those schemes of monarchy that now began to assume
+definite shape in his imagination. The Archduke Maximilian, though
+somewhat more than three years younger than Marie, and though poor, was
+nevertheless the son of the emperor, and might be considered useful to
+Burgundy. The negotiations were conducted quietly; Charles did not, it
+appears, wish to show himself too anxious; perhaps he was thinking that
+circumstances might change, and therefore did not wish to commit himself
+to this match beyond the power of recall.
+
+For the present, however, the noble lovers, who had never met, were both
+rather young; there was no need to hurry matters, since Charles himself
+was still in the prime of life. The disastrous campaign of the great
+duke in Switzerland has been described many a time, by historians
+friendly and unfriendly, and by a great romancer who loved all chivalry
+and who yet could not withhold his admiration from the intrepid Swiss
+freemen who bore down the power of Burgundy at Granson, at Morat, and at
+Nancy. Yet, whether we consider Charles a great ruler and leader or a
+mere military ruffian, no one can look without pity upon that
+snow-covered battlefield of Nancy, where a generous foe and the
+heartbroken servants of "the pride of chivalry" must look in vain for
+two days for the body of Charles; none could surely tell how he had
+fallen; and when they found his frozen body the dogs had eaten half of
+one cheek, and the wounds on the head rendered it almost unrecognizable.
+
+Mademoiselle de Bourgogne, as she was now to be known in earnest, was
+far away in Ghent when the fatal news of her father's death was brought.
+Before it could reach her it had reached the crafty old king. For Louis
+it was the sweetest news he could have heard; his greatest foe was
+providentially removed, and as his adversary in Burgundy there was now
+but a girl scarcely grown, a girl whose selfish advisers he well knew
+how to bribe or to ruin, as suited his interest. Well may we believe
+that when the news of Charles's death reached that French court where so
+many of the nobles had felt him to be their only help against the
+anti-feudal policy of Louis, "not one ate half he could at dinner," as
+the shrewd Comines says; now that the pillar of independent baronage was
+gone, who could tell what the king might do?
+
+Marie de Bourgogne was almost a prisoner among her too devoted subjects,
+the burghers of Ghent. She and her counsellors realized from the first
+that the real danger was to come from Louis XI, who would now seek to
+re-annex to the crown those large portions of the Burgundian domain that
+had originally come from France. Perhaps the letter of the feudal law
+was on the side of the king, who claimed the right of wardship over his
+female vassal; but Marie knew full well that this claim was but the
+first of a long series that would culminate in the actual seizure of
+French Burgundy as soon as Louis should feel himself strong enough. But
+though Louis was the ultimate and the greater danger, he could be put
+off, it was thought, by conciliatory messages; an immediate danger lay
+in turbulent Flanders, which even the strong duke could not master, and
+which now, in the midst of much exuberant devotion for mademoiselle,
+kept her in a state of constant uneasiness. Something must be done to
+quiet the Flemings.
+
+Marie, in imitation of all new-made sovereigns whose crowns are none too
+secure, began by granting most liberal charters and privileges to her
+loyal subjects in Flanders. For the most part, the liberties thus
+granted had been ancient liberties, temporarily denied under the
+Burgundians, and now resumed by the people with or without the official
+consent of their duchess. The Ghenters at once exercised their right of
+being their own judges, and arrested the magistrates who had dared to
+surrender the city's liberties to Charles and had governed in his name.
+But neither the granting of privileges to Flanders nor the grateful
+affection of the Ghenters could defend from Louis Picardy and the
+coveted towns on the Somme; money must be had, and the generous commons
+of Flanders were appealed to. This congress of the estates of Flanders,
+Artois, Hainault, Brabant, and Namur met at Ghent on February 3, 1477,
+less than a month after the death of Charles. Marie repeated to the
+delegates her assurances, her oaths, her promises, and granted the
+"Great Privilege," a sort of Magna Charta and Bill of Rights in the
+history of Holland. The special privileges enumerated in this grant are
+not novel; the grant was intended merely as a formal restatement--to be
+formally ratified by the sovereign--of those inalienable and
+indefeasible rights of the subject which were not recognized in most
+countries for many a decade to come. "It was a recapitulation and
+recognition of ancient rights, not an acquisition of new privileges. It
+was a restoration, not a revolution." The nature of the rights asserted
+by the subject and admitted by the sovereign may be easily gathered from
+a glance at one or two. "Offices shall be conferred by the duchess upon
+natives alone; and no man shall fill two offices. No office shall be
+farmed out. The great Council and Supreme Court of the provinces shall
+be re-established.... No new taxes may be imposed but by consent of the
+estates. No war, whether offensive or defensive, shall be begun by the
+duchess or any of her successors without the consent of the estates....
+No money shall be coined, nor shall its value be raised or lowered,
+except by consent of the estates." If the principles here enunciated
+could have been made good in practice, the liberties of Marie's subjects
+would indeed have been secure; but much of this Great Privilege, as well
+as of the similar charters granted to other provinces, was pure theory,
+and Marie no more meant to abide by her oath of ratification than King
+John had meant to observe the provisions of Magna Charta. For the
+present, however, she must feign to be right well pleased, though her
+cautious and devoted subjects had not granted her the aid she wanted, to
+be used as she saw fit. All negotiations would be conducted in her name,
+of course, but in dealing with Louis she must be guided by the counsel
+of the estates; and the estates would levy an army of a hundred thousand
+men for her--when it suited them to do so. That was the sum and
+substance of all that Marie could cajole them into granting.
+
+Meanwhile, Louis was making ready to seize Burgundy and Picardy,
+advancing now one pretext, now another, for his acts, seeking to give
+every seizure the appearance of legality, but bent on seizing, right or
+wrong. Marie despatched two of her father's oldest advisers, the
+chancellor Hugonet and the lord of Humbercourt, as ambassadors to Louis,
+to delay his proceedings. Though faithful to the interests of their
+duchess, Hugonet and Humbercourt were no match for the crafty king. He
+had already tampered with other servants of Burgundy, and had found few
+who could not be made to see that French gold or French titles were
+better worth considering than any favors received from a master who
+could no longer reward. Of this class was the Lord of Crevecoeur, whose
+mother had been the guardian of the young duchess when she had no
+mother, and to whom one of the most important charges in Burgundy had
+been deputed, the governorship of Picardy and of the towns on the Somme.
+Crevecoeur was a knight of the Toison d'Or, and had received countless
+other favors from Charles, whose daughter he was now willing to betray.
+What Louis most desired was Arras; this my Lord of Crevecoeur held for
+Burgundy; might there not be found some legal subterfuge or quibble
+authorizing him to hold it for the king? Louis cajoled, entreated,
+almost menaced, the Burgundian envoys, till they, thinking he would have
+Arras anyway, yielded so far as to issue an order to Crevecoeur, signed
+by the chancellor, Hugonet, authorizing him to open the gates of the
+town to the king. Louis entered Arras on March 4th, and Marie soon found
+that her troubles had but just begun.
+
+When the news of the surrender of Arras reached Ghent the citizens were
+furious, and demanded satisfaction from those who had betrayed the
+public trust. A fresh embassy went, from the States this time, to meet
+Louis, who was advancing through Picardy. Marie had to consent to this
+embassy, and doubtless thought that little harm would come of it; but
+the unscrupulous Louis knew how to deal with the burghers, and no
+considerations of honor hindered him from using any means in his power
+to sow the seeds of suspicion between the burghers and their duchess.
+When the embassy remonstrated with him for the desire to despoil the
+young heiress and told him that "there was no harm in her, that they
+could answer for her prudence and good faith, since she had publicly
+sworn to be guided by the Council of the States in all things," Louis
+assumed an injured air. "You are deceived," he said, "your mistress
+means to be guided by the advice of persons who do not desire peace."
+The envoys, thinking that Marie had been perfectly sincere and frank,
+refused to credit ill of her. Then Louis showed them a private note, in
+Marie's own hand, telling him that she would be guided solely by the
+advice of the court party and of Hugonet and Humbercourt in particular,
+and begging him to keep this secret from the envoys of the States.
+
+Enraged and mortified by this scandalous duplicity the burgher envoys
+returned hastily to Ghent. The duchess received them in solemn audience,
+seated upon her throne and surrounded by her courtiers. With great show
+of indignation she denied the allegations of the king. "Here is your own
+letter," said the chief of the envoys, drawing it forth from his bosom.
+Marie was overwhelmed with confusion, and knew not what to say. She
+trembled even for her own safety, now that this royal personage, in
+defiance of the comity of princes, had betrayed her to her own subjects.
+The duplicity of which she had been guilty was not so reprehensible as
+it seems to us; the blame of it rests more upon her advisers than upon
+her, and she was but a weak girl, encompassed by selfish intriguers and
+plotters who sought to rob her of that which she had been taught to
+regard as her unquestioned right.
+
+The most conspicuous of her counsellors, though not by any means the
+ones solely responsible for this unfortunate letter, were Hugonet and
+Humbercourt, who, feeling that the Ghenters would take vengeance upon
+them, threw themselves into a monastery immediately after the fatal
+audience, but were dragged out of the sanctuary that very night. Marie,
+faithful to those who had been faithful to her, would gladly have saved
+them, but upon the mere rumor that the prisoners would be allowed to
+escape the Ghenters flew to arms, congregated in the Friday market
+place, and, asserting their ancient right of permanent assembly in time
+of danger, camped there day and night till the two envoys were tried and
+executed. Marie might have claimed that the unhappy victims, being ducal
+officers, should be delivered over to the Grand Council for trial; but
+in view of the excited state of popular feeling even that was not to be
+thought of. And when she nominated a commission in which thirty out of
+thirty-six were citizens of Ghent, that too was insufficient assurance
+that the accused would be convicted; the citizens would have the whole
+affair in their own hands; their privileges had been tampered with, and
+they alone should punish the offenders. Marie did not even yet relax her
+efforts on behalf of Hugonet and Humbercourt; her determined fidelity to
+what she considered a sacred duty the protection of those who had risked
+themselves in her service is the best trait in her character. The
+gratitude of princes is not usually a burdensome obligation to them; but
+the best principles of chivalry had been instilled into Marie, and, like
+her rash but generous father, she would risk all on a point of honor.
+She sent representatives of the nobles to sit with the burgher's court,
+though they could take no part in the proceedings, and must be mere
+spectators of a judgment already resolved upon. When the supreme moment
+approached, Marie herself went to implore mercy for her servants.
+Dressed as a simple Flemish maiden, with the citizen's cap upon her
+head, she went on foot and unattended by guard or courtier or even so
+much as a lady of her suite, through the angry crowd in the market place
+to the Town Hall, where the court sat.
+
+But the judges themselves were more overawed by the relentless crowd
+whose angry murmurs penetrated to them than by the presence of their
+lady. Pity her they did; but as one of them said, pointing to the crowd:
+"We must satisfy the people." Not daunted by this failure, Marie went
+among the people themselves, those loving yet terrible subjects who had
+gathered to see that their will was carried out. In Friday market place
+she went from one to another, weeping, with clasped hands imploring them
+not to punish servants who had merely obeyed her commands. The sight of
+this defenceless girl, braving dangers in such a cause and venturing
+among a people whom she had offended, moved many to hearken to her plea.
+The men began to separate into two parties, those who could hear and see
+their lady inclining to her side, those farther off, removed from the
+direct influence of her presence, clamoring for justice upon the
+accused. Pikes were ranged against pikes, and there was imminent danger
+of a conflict; but the partisans of the duchess were in the minority,
+and their enthusiasm in her cause waned when they realized the danger of
+a civil broil. Marie's courageous appeal served only to hurry on the
+trial, since the judges were determined not to risk another scene
+fraught with such dangers.
+
+Hugonet and Humbercourt were put to the torture, and confessed what was
+enough to convict them, though it was what everyone already knew: that
+they had surrendered Arras. Humbercourt, a knight of the Toison d'Or,
+appealed to that body, which alone had jurisdiction over its members;
+but legal forms could not be respected in this crisis. When the court
+presented the confessions and the sentence to the young duchess, a
+formality with which, in all their disregard of legal forms, they
+thought it necessary to comply, she protested again, wept, entreated.
+All was vain: "Madam," said they, "you have sworn to do justice not only
+upon the poor, but upon the rich."
+
+The two nobles were placed in the condemned cart--where, on account of
+the injuries received in the torture, they could not stand--and led to
+execution. The people had succeeded in destroying those who had dared to
+disregard their wishes; the sovereign of Burgundy was completely in
+their power. They declared themselves her most fitting guardians and
+counsellors, deprived her of the comfort of having even members of her
+family about her, and proposed to find a husband for her more suitable
+than any suggested by the nobles.
+
+To all of this Marie was forced to submit with what grace she could; but
+upon the matter of a husband she was resolved to have something to say
+for herself. No less than six suitors had some sort of claim to her,
+besides the one to whom her father had betrothed her in 1473. There was
+the dauphin, a mere boy of eight, for whom Louis was intriguing; there
+was, at the other extreme, the worthless and worn-out profligate,
+Clarence, whom Margaret of York hoped to establish in this new and rich
+nest; there was the fierce and cruel Adolphus of Guelders, who had ended
+a career of crime in prison, and whom the Ghenters meant to take out of
+prison that he might be their duke and leader: then there were the
+English Lord Rivers, brother of England's queen, and the son of the Lord
+of Ravenstein, and the son of the Duke of Cleves. In the whole list
+there was not one whom the poor girl could have considered with anything
+but aversion. The worst of all, both politically and personally, was the
+dauphin; the idea of contracting a marriage with a mere child, and that
+child the son of her most dangerous enemy, was revolting to Marie's
+feelings, so lately excited by the death of her two servants, betrayed
+by Louis. At her very court she was surrounded by spies, who, pretending
+to sympathize with her and console her, reported to Louis or to the
+emperor all the intimate confidences of the poor girl.
+
+The interest of Austria finally seemed to be in the ascendant, for now
+Margaret, despairing of making Clarence acceptable either to the young
+lady or to her subjects or even to Edward IV., had thrown her influence
+on the side of Maximilian, and the influence of France in the Burgundian
+councils had been ruined by the manifest determination of the king to
+absorb all French Burgundy, all Flanders, if he could get it. There had
+not been sufficient time for the growth of real national feeling in the
+ill-assorted and scattered provinces of the duchy; but the non-French
+parts of Burgundy, at least, by no means relished the idea of losing
+their identity and becoming parts of France.
+
+Personal reasons also inclined Marie to favor the Austrian suitor.
+Maximilian had been in some sort the choice of her father, and this
+alone would have some weight with her. Besides, he was young; report
+said he was handsome: "The hairs of his august head are, after the
+German fashion, golden, lustrous, curiously adorned, and of becoming
+length. His port is lordly." And report spoke no ill of this fair young
+golden-haired Teuton; he might be some three years younger than
+Mademoiselle de Bourgogne, but he was already a man and a bold hunter,
+though as yet he had had no opportunity of showing whether he were
+capable of leading armies, a very necessary accomplishment in one who
+would undertake the care of Mademoiselle and her much coveted heritage.
+He was poor: but was not she rich enough to make up the deficiency? On
+the whole, Mademoiselle was so favorably impressed with what the
+Austrian advocates could tell her that she determined to receive the
+embassy then on the way to present the formal claim of Maximilian.
+
+The Duke of Cleves, who had hopes for his own son, did his best to delay
+the ambassadors, and, failing that, to make Marie promise to give them
+an audience and then send them about their business. She had already had
+enough of diplomatic experience to make her cautious. The Duke of Cleves
+was not taken into her confidence, but was permitted to hope that
+Mademoiselle would not settle the matter with the Austrian envoys.
+
+The envoys came, and were received in public audience, where their chief
+rehearsed the details of the negotiations between the late duke and
+emperor, and ended by presenting a letter written by Mademoiselle
+herself in acknowledgment of the betrothal, and a diamond sent by her as
+a token. Then Marie, to the utter dismay of the intriguers, quietly
+replied, of her own accord: "I wrote that letter by the wish and command
+of my lord and father, and sent that diamond; I own to the contents."
+
+Marie and Maximilian were formally married on April 27th, and the
+people, weary of the state of uncertainty in which they had been kept,
+seemed content to make the best of the marriage. The prince was a
+German, did not speak their language or understand their customs; but
+then he was prepossessing, and would doubtless make as good a defender
+of their liberties as could be found. With the marriage, Marie
+practically ceased to appear as a direct participant in political
+affairs. Her new husband was devoted to her, and for a time things
+looked more encouraging for this last scion of a great race. True, Louis
+sent his barber-surgeon, Olivier, to protest, in the name of the
+suzerain, against the marriage of his feudal ward without his consent.
+But the Flemish nobles and their lady laughed at the barber, who really
+came more to spy than in the hope that this mediaeval protest would
+avail aught. Later, in his first battle, Maximilian completely defeated
+the French army under the traitor Lord Crevecoeur, at Guinegatte, August
+7, 1479.
+
+Meanwhile, a son had been born to the young couple, and their domestic
+happiness was unclouded. Fortune was not to smile on them long, however,
+for the Flemings were constitutionally rebellious, now refusing to grant
+Maximilian supplies necessary for defence, till he actually had to pawn
+his wife's jewels, now blaming all their misfortunes on this foreigner,
+now distracting his attention from the still encroaching French king by
+riots and revolts. In the unequal contest the French were destined to
+win; and ere Marie had been married five years an accident cost her her
+life and left Maximilian almost as helpless in the hands of the Flemings
+as she had been. She had been hunting, a sport of which both she and
+Maximilian were passionately fond, when her horse threw her. The
+injuries might not have proved fatal if medical aid had been resorted to
+in time; but Marie, with pitiful false modesty, refused to submit to the
+examination of the surgeons, and died, after lingering three weeks,
+March 26, 1482. Her infant son, Philippe le Beau, remained as the
+nominal heir of Burgundy; but the guarding of the duchy was a hopeless
+task when a regency must control affairs, and so with Marie passed away
+the last independent ruler of the house of Burgundy, whose greatness was
+to be transmitted to and surpassed by the son of this Philippe, the
+great Emperor Charles V.
+
+The brief and troubled life of Marie de Bourgogne affords but little
+opportunity for an estimate of her capabilities. She was reared under
+conditions the most unfavorable to the development of independence,
+self-reliance, and capacity for practical affairs; for feudalism, even
+at its best, as we have seen, produced but few women who were capable of
+ruling a nation, and the spectacular chivalry of the Burgundian court
+found no place for woman but as an angelic, gracious, beautiful
+spectator of its great shows, one infinitely removed by every detail of
+her education and of her social life from the sordid cares of life and
+of politics. Marie was not of that rare type that might, even under such
+conditions, rise to power; she was not strong enough of will to mark out
+a policy of her own and bend men and conditions to serve that policy. In
+not one of her public acts as duchess can we find that she was
+uninfluenced by those around her; she was indeed swayed first by one set
+of counsellors, then by another, the natural result being inconsistency,
+duplicity, and inefficiency. But where the mere woman appears, where
+there is room for the operation of impulses purely personal, as in the
+case of Hugonet and Humbercourt and in the selection of her husband,
+Marie displays nobler feelings; and though the cause of civilization was
+to be advanced by the dismemberment of the heterogeneous Burgundian
+duchy and the annexation of the greater part of it to France, our
+sympathy is not with the spider who sat spinning his meshes of intrigue
+in the den at Plessis-lez-Tours, but with the generous, impulsive young
+ruler whom we know he will fatally entangle. With Marie in Burgundy, as
+with the passionate and unhappy Marguerite of Anjou in England, we are
+inclined to forgive the ruler who could not rule, or who resorted to
+infamous means in her struggles to rule, when we remember that both were
+women brought face to face with tremendous problems and made the sport
+of crafty, cruel, unscrupulous foes and faithless friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ANNE DE BEAUJEU: THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM
+
+_C'est la moins folle femme du monde, car, de femme sage il n'y en a
+point_ (she is the least foolish woman in the world; there are no wise
+ones). The cynical old king, Louis XI., sums up for us in this epigram
+his estimate of the daughter whom he loved and trusted more than any
+other person of his own blood. This daughter, Anne de France, was but a
+young woman when her father died, but the tortuous policy and the
+sagacious aims of Louis XI. had become familiar to her as a mere girl,
+and she lived to continue and in some sort to carry to successful
+terminations the principal schemes cherished by her father.
+
+Almost from her very birth, Louis had used her in his intrigues,
+proposing her marriage now with this prince, now with that, according as
+the needs of the moment suggested. When the chief of his enemies,
+Charles le Temeraire, lost his first wife, Louis proposed that he marry
+the princess Anne, at that time a child of two years, and offered as her
+dowry Champagne, if Charles would agree that Normandy should revert to
+the Crown without question. Yet, a year later, 1466, when Louis had
+obtained possession of Normandy and had no further immediate need of
+Charles, he offered Anne to the son of the Duke of Calabria. Neither
+bargain was meant to be kept; but Charles, partly out of anger at the
+king's bad faith, married Margaret of York. Seven years later, when
+Louis had made up his mind to conciliate the house of Bourbon, Anne was
+betrothed to Pierre de Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and as no new alliance
+presented itself as desirable, Anne de France became Anne de Beaujeu.
+
+Anne was enough like her father in the hardness and crafty resoluteness
+of her character to win his confidence. We see her intrusted with the
+care of one of the most important of those noble wards whom Louis loved
+to bring to his court and keep under tutelage, Marguerite, the little
+daughter of Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne. When the fear of
+assassination had driven the king to immure himself in
+Plessis-lez-Tours, and to hedge himself about with such fantastic and
+intricate defences that none but his favored lowborn servants could
+enter with ease and hope of return, he would sometimes admit this
+favored daughter. And when, in the imminence of death, he determined
+that the silly dauphin, jealously guarded at Amboise, should learn
+something and should know that the power of the sceptre was soon to pass
+to him, it was Anne de Beaujeu again on whom he relied. He enjoined the
+dauphin Charles to keep about him the faithful servants who had made
+France; especially did he recommend "Master Oliver," without whom, he
+said, "I should have been nothing." But, before all others, the dauphin
+was to honor and obey his wise sister, Anne de Beaujeu, the least
+foolish woman in the world.
+
+In spite of astrologers; in spite of liberal doses of that expensive
+panacea, potable gold, administered by his insolent physician, Jacques
+Coictier; in spite of a second anointing from the sacred _ampulla_,
+brought from Rheims for that special purpose; in spite of all the silver
+saints stuck on the rim of his cap the spirit went out of the body of
+Louis XI, and France welcomed his death as a deliverance. In his zeal
+for the destruction of feudalism and the upbuilding of a national
+government, he had become a tyrant. But the work he had begun must go
+on, if France was not to step back fifty or a hundred years in progress.
+The new king, Charles VIII, was but a boy of fourteen, and deplorably
+immature. He could hardly read and write, nor did natural intelligence
+supply the defects of education; for he was weak in mind, weak in body,
+and easily influenced for good or for ill. With such a tool ready for
+the hand of any ambitious noble who would destroy France, the outlook
+was not cheering. But it was the good fortune of France to find a ruler
+who could and did control the king till such time as the fruits of the
+wise despotism of Louis could be safely gathered; and this ruler was a
+woman.
+
+As Charles had already attained the legal majority prescribed for the
+heir to the throne, there could be no regency. But Anne de Beaujeu and
+her husband had been named by the late king as the tutors of Charles, to
+the exclusion of Louis d'Orleans, who, as first prince of the blood
+royal, had a prescriptive right to the guardianship. And just as Blanche
+de Castille, under different conditions and by different means, had
+managed to displace Philippe Hurepel, so Anne now managed to outwit and
+supplant Louis d'Orleans.
+
+She had already laid the foundations of her influence by making friends
+of the best counsellors and captains of the late king. And her brother,
+to whom she was a divinity to be worshipped and feared, was already so
+accustomed to submission to her will that it did not occur to him to
+resist her authority now. In default of a regent, there was a royal
+council, and in this council Anne managed to assure herself of a
+powerful following. To be sure, at first there was nothing to fear,
+since Louis d' Orleans, young and fond of pleasure, was engaged in
+satisfying his tastes after the long and irksome restraint to which he
+had been subjected by Louis XI; and so, in place of politics, he took
+pleasure, availing himself of every distraction that could help him to
+forget the terrible days of the old king, or the ugly face and crooked
+body of the king's daughter, who was his wife. Nevertheless, Louis
+d'Orleans was the natural leader of the opposition to the control of
+Anne de Beaujeu, and the latter lost no time in securing for herself,
+through her husband, a majority in the council, a body composed of such
+diverse elements, and so uncertain of its own mind, that it was easy for
+a determined leader to carry her policies through its divided and
+hesitating ranks.
+
+Anne was only twenty-two, but already there was coming to be a special
+significance attached to her sobriquet, _Madame la Grande_; for the
+imperious will, the boldness and shrewdness combined, the restless
+energy, the constant watchfulness of the woman made itself felt
+throughout that government in which she had no legal standing. Her
+governing was done under constitutional forms, in the name of the king,
+in the name of the council; but people knew that she had dictated to the
+king what he should do, and had imposed her will upon the council. Until
+the States-General had met, voted supplies, been promised reforms, and
+then dissolved, Anne was very guarded, very conciliatory in her policy;
+the unjust acts of Louis XI were set right--where it did not cost too
+much to do so--and certain obnoxious persons, such as Olivier le Daim,
+were sacrificed to popular hatred. As soon as the States-General had
+been disposed of, however, the two parties in the council began to
+assume a more hostile attitude toward each other, and the charge that
+Madame la Grande was meddling in things that concerned her not was
+raised by the Duke of Orleans. His cousin, Dunois, and other persons
+anxious for the restriction of the royal power, persuaded Louis
+d'Orleans that it was an outrage that a woman should reduce him to the
+second place in the national council, and make herself virtually queen
+of France. Incited by these plotters, Louis determined to loosen the
+hold of Anne upon the young king.
+
+Violating a solemn oath he had taken, under Louis XI, to abstain from
+compromising relations with the enemies of France, he began to seek
+allies against the Beaujeu faction, and turned first to Brittany. But a
+temporary eclipse of the Breton favorite, Landois, who had ruled his
+master almost as Olivier had ruled Louis, made the visit of Orleans a
+fruitless one, and he returned to Paris to resort to means more in
+conformity with his tastes. The young king was intensely fond of
+brilliant festivities; romantic love of the spectacular side of chivalry
+was his ruling passion; and therefore Louis sought to alienate him from
+Anne by providing him with amusements. Jousts and tourneys, balls,
+masquerades, all as brilliant and attractive as Louis could make them,
+filled the two months after Charles's royal entry into his "well beloved
+city of Paris" (July 5, 1484). Charles was beginning to think that his
+"fair cousin of Orleans" was a very delightful companion, and so much
+more obliging than that high tempered and dictatorial sister whom he had
+been obeying; besides, what right had she to dictate to him: was he not
+a king? Before the danger grew acute, before these vague questionings in
+the royal head assumed definite shape, Anne picked up her precious
+sovereign and carried him away from gay Paris and the temptations of the
+fascinating Louis. Then it was that Louis left the court, resolved not
+to return until he had overthrown the Beaujeu party.
+
+The great nobles of the land were ready enough to unite in opposition to
+the arbitrary rule of a woman, and of a woman who had not the shadow of
+a constitutional right to rule. But though discontent was general among
+the nobles, they yet lacked energy and direction, while the commons took
+but little interest in a mere squabble among their rulers. Perhaps the
+general opinion was somewhat like that of the University of Paris, to
+which Louis had appealed, namely, that the power was in the hands best
+fitted to wield it. Undoubtedly, the Parliament of Paris was of this
+opinion; for when Louis presented a long petition reciting his
+grievances and protesting against the usurpation of Madame de Beaujeu,
+who held in unlawful subjection the person of the king, who intended to
+keep the said king in tutelage until his twenty-first year, who had
+unlawfully levied taxes, and who meditated the destruction of the
+petitioner,--when Louis presented these charges, and besought the
+Parliament to command that the king be brought back to Paris, the
+president very prudently gave answer that the court of Parliament was a
+court of law, and had nothing to do with administrative matters, and
+that no one had a right thus to appear before the court to remonstrate
+against the administrative acts of the sovereign. There was little
+comfort in all this for Louis; and while he was still hesitating in
+Paris, Anne sent a troop of men-at-arms to arrest him. A hasty flight
+alone saved him, and he at once repaired to Alencon, where the duke
+received him as a friend in distress; while Anne, hastening back to
+Paris, deprived Orleans and his accomplices of their honors and military
+commands.
+
+The forces of the discontented princes would have been superior to those
+at the disposal of Anne, if they could have been brought together; but
+their domains were scattered, and they themselves were vacillating,
+jealous of each other, reluctant to resort at once to foreign aid. With
+her usual promptness, Anne intercepted their communications, seized and
+executed summarily their spies, and herself negotiated with Brittany and
+with the Flemish towns; while Dunois and Orleans were surprised and
+captured in Beaugency by La Tremoille, commanding for Anne. For the
+moment, the rebellion had been put down without serious loss. Dunois was
+exiled to Asti, and Louis of Orleans, who had not even been able to win
+the support of his own city, came back to court in October, 1485.
+
+A new danger, however, threatened Anne's supremacy during the next
+spring, when Maximilian of Austria, now titular King of the Romans,
+invaded Artois. Jubilant at the prospect of securing such an ally
+against Madame la Grande, a new league of the great nobles signed a
+secret treaty with Maximilian in December. With the Dukes of Orleans,
+Brittany, Lorraine, and Bourbon, the Counts of Dunois, Nevers,
+Angouleme, and a host of others thus leagued against her, the situation
+of Madame de Beaujeu was most precarious. Besides actual warfare, she
+had to fear continual plots having for their object the capture of the
+young king. The great Philippe de Comines, along with Louis d'Orleans,
+was implicated in one of these plots, and was seized by the watchful
+Anne, while Louis fled to Brittany and urged its duke to invade France.
+
+Anne did not hesitate as to her course, but marched into southern
+France, taking the king, the warrant of her authority, with her. This
+sudden diversion disconcerted the nobles, and one town after another
+opened its gates to Charles VIII., till, in March, 1487, he entered
+Bordeaux in triumph, and the old Duke of Bourbon and the Count of
+Angouleme made their submission. The Breton nobles, angry at the
+interference in their affairs by the rebellious French princes, who had
+completely won the confidence of the weak Duke Francois II., resolved to
+expel the foreigners, and appealed to Anne to help them. She responded
+by despatching a force of twelve thousand men into Brittany and
+besieging the duke and Louis d'Orleans in Nantes. But the town having
+received reinforcements from Maximilian, the royal army raised the siege
+and occupied strategic points in Brittany. While the season forbade
+military operations, Anne returned to Paris with her king, and had
+resort to law in her contest with the rebels. She issued a summons to
+the Dukes of Orleans and Brittany to appear before the court of
+Parliament. Upon their failure to appear, however, another summons was
+issued; but no sentence was passed, since Anne did not care to push
+matters to extremes in the case of these great personages, whom she
+hoped to conciliate; but Dunois, Comines, and others of the rebels were
+condemned for contumacy, their goods were confiscated, and, if their
+persons could be laid hold of, they were imprisoned. Comines, historian
+and scholar as he was, and favorite of Louis XI, had a taste of
+imprisonment in one of those famous iron cages of which his old master
+had been so fond.
+
+In the spring of 1488 the power of the house of Beaujeu was increased by
+the death of the Duke of Bourbon, to whose duchy Anne's husband was
+heir. Nevertheless, fortune was not favoring Anne in all things; for the
+Breton nobles, having repented of their rebellion against their own
+duke, and beginning to suspect that Madame Anne meant to keep her troops
+in Brittany, now changed sides, and expelled the French garrisons from
+some of the towns. In retaliation, Anne's general, Louis de La
+Tremoille, began a vigorous campaign in Brittany early in April, which
+culminated in the decisive victory of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier (July
+27th). The Breton army was completely routed, and the rebel nobles,
+including Louis d' Orleans and the Prince of Orange, fell into the power
+of Anne. Louis, her most dangerous enemy, was confined in the tower of
+Bourges, where he might meditate, without endangering the public peace,
+upon the injustice of allowing a woman to govern France. Within a month
+after the battle, Francois II., humbly suing for peace to his
+"sovereign" Charles VIII., signed a treaty in which he promised to
+exclude from his court and dukedom the enemies of France, and to
+negotiate no marriage for his daughters without the advice and consent
+of Charles. In the name of Charles, as usual, all this was done; but it
+was really a signal triumph for Anne de Beaujeu. The pride of her Breton
+adversary was broken, and he did not long survive the treaty; some have
+declared that he died of chagrin at being no longer able to betroth his
+daughters first to one suitor and then to another. Whether of chagrin or
+of some more ordinary complaint, he died in September, 1488, and it then
+developed that his eldest daughter, Anne, a girl of not quite twelve,
+had indeed been promised to three parties simultaneously.
+
+Out of the confused situation in Brittany it was Madame de Beaujeu's
+task to make profit for France. The eldest daughter and heiress of the
+late duke, Anne de Bretagne, was enjoined by the royal council from
+assuming her title of duchess until authorized to do so by the king, who
+claimed not only the feudal wardship of the heiress of Brittany, but her
+very coronet itself, under the terms of a treaty between the Crown and
+certain of the great barons of Brittany, including Marshal de Rieux,
+then guardian of Anne de Bretagne. This treaty, dating from 1484, had
+recognized the claims of the king as superior to those of the female
+heirs in Brittany, as in other fiefs where the court was endeavoring to
+enforce the _Loi Salique_. But Marshal de Rieux and his friends had now
+changed their views, seeing that the pretensions of the crown would
+result in the extinction of Brittany as a distinct and independent
+province; they preferred governing the province through the young
+duchess to being governed by Madame la Grande.
+
+Madame la Grande was well aware that her claims on behalf of the king
+would not be peaceably admitted; she was prepared to encounter armed
+resistance, and probably foresaw her opportunity in the quarrels that
+would inevitably break out among the Bretons as to who was to control
+the heiress, and, above all, as to who was to marry her. The ducal court
+of Brittany soon became the hotbed of intrigue, where divided counsel
+prevailed, and where alliances were made on all sides and adhered to on
+none. With the aid of Maximilian, of the Spaniards, and of the
+English,--all of whom were more or less concerned, and more or less
+willing to support Brittany against France,--the Bretons could have
+offered successful resistance to the French armies. But the jealousies
+of the Breton nobles, the craft and ability of Anne de Beaujeu, and the
+feminine caprice of Anne de Bretagne, made ineffective the best efforts
+of France's enemies. The Sire d'Albret, a man of hideous aspect, of
+detestable character, and very nearly four times as old as the bride he
+claimed, affirmed that Anne de Bretagne had been promised to him.
+Marshal de Rieux, Anne's guardian, upheld the claims of D'Albret, and in
+behalf of his protege resorted to fraud, in fabricating proofs of the
+alleged betrothal, and to force. Meanwhile, the enterprising Dunois
+formed a plot to kidnap the duchess and carry her off to France. Seeking
+to escape these two dangers, the poor girl fled to Nantes, where,
+however, De Rieux had the gates shut against her. Rennes, more
+compassionate and more patriotic, offered her a refuge till the
+immediate danger was passed. But there was no rest or safety for her as
+long as she remained unmarried. The Sire d'Albret was loathsome to her;
+therefore, under the temporary influence of other advisers, she gave her
+hand to the ambassador of Maximilian, and was secretly married to this
+proxy-husband, with every form and ceremony that could be thought of to
+make the strange compact binding.
+
+A secret of such momentous consequence could not, in the nature of
+things, remain a secret for any long period. The mock marriage had taken
+place in the summer of 1490. Within a few months, the bride, bursting
+with the importance of her new dignity, was actually signing decrees as
+"Queen of the Romans," and the troubles in Brittany began with renewed
+violence on the part of the disappointed aspirants to the control of the
+duchy. Anne de Beaujeu, never dismayed, even by complications that might
+to others seem hopeless, at once took advantage of the resentment of
+D'Albret and De Rieux, secured the alliance of the latter and bought
+outright that of the former, and so was soon able to regain military
+supremacy in Brittany, and to begin her plans for breaking off the
+marriage between Anne de Bretagne and Maximilian. Had the latter been a
+native Burgundian, or had he concentrated his resources for the
+attainment of one capital object, the whole history of France might have
+been changed: we might have seen a second Burgundian power, now
+strengthened by the rugged and yet unsubdued Brittany, hemming France in
+on the east, on the west, on the north, and utterly stunting the growth
+of that national unity which was to make France a great and homogeneous
+power. But Maximilian was busy patching up the power of his Austrian
+dominions, and trying to keep on reasonably good terms with his Flemish
+subjects; meanwhile, he thought his bride might look out for herself,
+and was not aware that Anne de Beaujeu was preparing a coup that would
+deprive him forever of Brittany.
+
+The influence of Anne de Beaujeu was already showing signs of a decline;
+and it therefore behooved her to work while it was yet day, for the time
+was fast coming when her boy king would no longer submit to sisterly
+tyranny. Charles was in his twentieth year when, in the spring of 1491,
+he made his first independent move, with a prospect of still more
+dangerous manifestations of independence. One evening he left Plessis,
+as if to go hunting, and rode toward Bourges. He had secretly given
+orders that Louis d'Orleans should be released, and went to meet and be
+reconciled with this dangerous adversary of his sister. Louis, who had
+been sobered by his confinement, was overjoyed at his release, and met
+the king with every manifestation of loyal devotion and respect.
+Fortunately, Louis cherished no feelings of resentment against the house
+of Beaujeu, and willingly acceded to the formal reconciliation proposed
+by the king, signing, with Pierre de Bourbon, a treaty of amity and
+fraternal love, in which all past wrongs and differences were to be
+forgotten. Louis was faithful to the spirit of this agreement, and
+France had no longer to fear his factious activity. And when Dunois,
+always ready to plot, always ready to undo his own plots, also agreed to
+a reconciliation, the personal power of Anne in the royal council may
+have been weakened, but the ultimate triumph of the principles for which
+she had contended was assured. Though no longer dominant in all things,
+she could yet shape the policy of the kingdom and contrive the ruin of
+Maximilian's ambitious schemes.
+
+To unite France and Brittany had been the dream of the French kings, but
+again and again had the dream proved a delusion. Louis XI, always awake
+to every possible chance of advantage, had bought the claims of the
+heiress of the ancient line of Charles de Blois and Jeanne de
+Penthievre; but no opportunity of profiting by these claims had been
+vouchsafed his greedy soul. Now the coveted province seemed more
+hopelessly alienated than ever. For Anne de Bretagne was married to
+Maximilian, and the young King of France was solemnly betrothed to the
+daughter of Maximilian, Marguerite, who had actually been reared at the
+French court on purpose to fit her for the post of queen, and who had
+already received, by courtesy, the titles and honors of her station,
+though her youth still precluded the consummation of the marriage. How
+to rob Maximilian of his bride and dispose of his daughter was a problem
+that might well have seemed hopeless of solution. But Madame de Beaujeu
+was not hopeless, nor was she over-scrupulous.
+
+Before Maximilian could bring his Austrian-Hungarian war to a
+satisfactory conclusion, the French armies had established almost
+complete control of Brittany. The young duchess, none too pleased at the
+neglect of this treaty-husband, was easily persuaded that the marriage,
+contracted against the will of her feudal lord, and never consummated by
+a husband who seemed more absorbed in politics than fired by passion,
+was not really a religious compact, but a treaty that could be abrogated
+like any other treaty. She consented to break off the match with her
+King of the Romans, but, having once borne the title of queen, neither
+count nor duke would she have for a husband, only a king. Anne de
+Beaujeu promptly suggested that the heiress of Brittany should replace
+the daughter of Maximilian, and marry Charles VIII. On November 15th
+Charles entered Rennes. To Maximilian and the rest of Europe this seemed
+but the honest fulfilment of the terms of the treaty of peace extorted
+from unwilling Brittany; no one outside of the trusted friends of the
+duchess and of the king had the least suspicion that, three days later,
+the pair had had an interview, and that, in the presence of Louis
+d'Orleans, of Anne and Pierre de Bourbon, of the chancellor of Brittany,
+and of a few others, they were formally betrothed.
+
+Secrecy was essential to the success of the plan. This secret was well
+kept, particularly as the time of repression was short, for Anne de
+Beaujeu was wise enough to conclude the matter as soon as possible.
+Within a month, Charles went to the chateau of Langeais, in Touraine,
+whither Anne de Bretagne followed him. Before the world knew what was
+intended, they were married and were on their way to Plessis-lez-Tours,
+where the gloomy old den of Louis XI was enlivened by brilliant royal
+festivities. The ghost of the old king, however unfriendly to mirth and
+jollity, must have looked on approvingly and grinned with joy at the
+thought of the splendid and long-coveted dowry that his wise daughter
+had won for France. He, too, would have taken a malicious pleasure in
+the very means Anne had used to hoodwink and cheat Maximilian.
+Duplicity, the most boldfaced trickery, had been resorted to, to lead
+Maximilian off the true scent. While the marriage articles that would
+rob him of his Breton bride were being arranged, Anne de Beaujeu was
+keeping him occupied with the details of an arrangement that would grant
+free passage to his bride when she saw fit to repair to the husband who
+could not find time to come to her. And while he was carrying on this
+negotiation, in good faith, came the news that Charles had robbed him of
+his bride and was sending back his daughter. It was a double insult, and
+one that might have cost France dearly had Maximilian's power equalled
+his anger and resentment. Nothing but "diplomacy" could have
+accomplished the union of France and Brittany, that sort of diplomacy
+which in a private individual would be condemned by every ethical law,
+but which often results most advantageously for the state, and hence is
+condoned.
+
+With this marriage the great role of Anne de Beaujeu ceases; for though
+she continued to advise, she could no longer command, and the government
+of France was left to Charles VIII. Anne was one of those counsellors
+who raised their voices in unheeded protest against the impolitic
+rashness of Charles's campaign in Italy, a campaign whose mad
+extravagance and disastrous results fully justified all that Anne had
+said to dissuade her brother. But in this, as in other matters of less
+moment, it was evident that Anne's day of usefulness had passed. By the
+time her old rival, Louis d'Orleans, became Louis XII. she had
+completely retired from politics, and continued to govern nothing but
+her husband, in spite of the generous confidence shown in her by the new
+king. Louis XII. cherished no resentment for the injuries inflicted upon
+the young Louis d'Orleans by Madame la Grande, and gratefully
+acknowledged how important had been her services to the crown. But
+Madame la Grande intervened no more in public affairs, though she lived
+on until 1522.
+
+The wisdom and foresight of this great daughter of the hated tyrant of
+Plessis may be appreciated more fully if we will but consider for a
+moment the history of that Anne de Bretagne whose heritage she had
+secured for the crown of France. The early history of this princess has
+been already sketched in the preceding pages. She was but fifteen when
+Madame la Grande brought about the marriage with Charles VIII. Already,
+however, she had manifested traits that accorded but ill with the
+character of her royal mate. For she was not only handsome, spirited,
+and naturally independent and intelligent, but fond of intellectual
+pursuits, almost a scholar, knowing Latin and Greek, that new tongue
+that was just becoming the fashion in Europe, the tongue whose rich and
+deep literature, so long misunderstood or unknown during the Middle
+Ages, was to be most fruitful of inspirations for the Renaissance.
+Imagine her yoked with a prince of frivolous disposition, lacking even
+in ordinary intelligence, so ignorant that he could scarcely read and
+write, and interested chiefly in the idle shows of that chivalry in
+whose ranks he could not shine because of his awkward and weak frame.
+With admirable appreciation of her duty, Anne sunk the woman in the wife
+and queen, subordinating her own personality to that of a man whom she
+could not have respected, whom it seems impossible she could have loved.
+She resigned into his hands the administration of her own province of
+Brittany, and sought no share in the determination of the policy of the
+kingdom. Leaving politics to the king and his councillors, she devoted
+herself to the petty affairs of her court, regulated its accounts,
+decided its points of etiquette, kept its atmosphere pure and healthy,
+just as any little Breton housewife would have governed and made
+comfortable the home of her husband. Whether she loved Charles or not,
+she always treated him with respect.
+
+The seven years of their married life were passed without a sign from
+her that the union had proved anything but the happiest in the world. On
+April 7, 1498, Charles, walking hurriedly through a dark corridor of the
+Chateau d'Amboise, where his father had kept him in confinement little
+different from imprisonment, struck his head against a scaffolding
+carelessly left in place by the workmen who were repairing the chateau,
+and died a few hours later. Anne made becoming show of grief, refused to
+be consoled, would not, it is said, touch food for three days, and
+insisted on wearing black in token of her grief, though as queen she was
+entitled to wear white. Grief, she said, had unfitted her for the life
+at court; she must return to her native Brittany and seek in the
+administration of its affairs to banish the memory of the lost husband.
+
+The wisdom of Anne de Beaujeu had united Brittany to France; it now
+seemed as if the good results of her diplomacy were to be lost. There
+had been a stipulation, it is true, in the contract of marriage between
+Anne de Bretagne and Charles, that, in case of the death of the king,
+his widow could marry none but the successor or the heir presumptive to
+the crown of France; but this stipulation now seemed about to prove
+unavailing. For the heir presumptive at the time of Anne's widowhood was
+the little Count Francois d'Angouleme, a boy not yet out of the nursery,
+while the successor of Charles VIII. was already married to Jeanne,
+sister of the late king. It was a dilemma as serious as that solved by
+Anne de Beaujeu seven years before. But, as has been shown in this case,
+"be there a will, and wisdom finds a way," or if not wisdom, the
+hocus-pocus of diplomacy. In the present case it was soon apparent that,
+on both sides, there was a will; and though the way lay directly over
+the bleeding heart of a good woman, that way was found and followed by
+Louis XII.
+
+Before the death of Charles, no one had suspected that Louis cherished
+any sentiments but those of loyal respect for Anne de Bretagne. When he
+saw her go away, taking with her the dowry that had cost so dear, the
+court discovered that the new king was hopelessly enamored of the
+mourning Breton widow. Anne was, it is true, personally attractive, and
+Louis was known to be not only susceptible to feminine charms but
+deplorably unhappy with his own wife; nevertheless, one cannot accord
+unquestioning faith to the genuineness of an affection that was so
+obviously politic, whether genuine or counterfeit. Anne, too, despite
+her widow's weeds and her tears, could not help showing that she left
+the court with regret. In justice to her, it cannot be said that she had
+betrayed her willingness to return Louis's sentiments; yet he must have
+felt reasonably sure of his standing in her heart before he undertook to
+make room for her by his side.
+
+Almost the first scene of our history has to do with just such an
+instance of shameless quibbling about sacred things as that we must now
+record. Louis's wife, Jeanne de France, was a good, gentle, loving
+woman, who had clung with despairing affection to a husband who despised
+her, who was unfaithful to her, who was now to humiliate her. The poor
+creature was unfortunately ugly, and deformed, and twenty-two years of
+unfailing devotion it was in great part owing to her incessant appeals
+that the young Charles VIII. had liberated Louis from Bourges--had not
+reconciled the ungrateful husband to the marriage. He now bethought
+himself that this marriage had been contracted when he was but a youth,
+under threat of death from Louis XI, that Jeanne had borne him no
+children, and that they were related within the degrees prohibited by
+the Church. He appealed to the head of the Church, the notorious
+Alexander VI., to annul an incestuous union that was a burden to his
+conscience. Needless to say that, in the corrupt papal court of that
+period, the appeal was supported by arguments more weighty than
+honorable. Needless to say that, in spite of the heartbroken protests of
+Jeanne, Alexander, and his son Caesar Borgia, having received their
+price, granted a decree annulling the marriage.
+
+Having disposed of his wife, Louis sought the disconsolate widow in
+Brittany. Anne made some show of reluctance, of inconsolable grief, and
+of scruples moral and sentimental. As a matter of fact, however, she had
+consented to marry Louis before the divorce from Jeanne had been
+secured, and within four months from the death of Charles. The decree of
+divorce, brought by magnificent Caesar Borgia himself, was published in
+December, 1498, and the marriage of Anne and Louis XII. was celebrated
+at Nantes in January, 1499.
+
+Anne had profited by her sojourn at the French court; the new contract
+of marriage was far from being as favorable to France as that imposed by
+Anne de Beaujeu. It was now stipulated that she should retain in her own
+hands the administration of Brittany, and that the administrative
+offices and the ecclesiastical benefices should be filled by natives of
+Brittany only and with the consent of the duchess; that the ancient
+rights and privileges so dear to the Bretons should be respected; and
+that the province should descend to the second child of the marriage, or
+to the second child of her child, if there should be but one born to her
+and Louis, or to her own heirs next of kin, in case the marriage should
+prove childless. But little hope was left in this contract that the
+dearest wish of Anne de Beaujeu should be gratified, and that Brittany
+should remain French.
+
+A complete change of character and of policy in a woman of twenty-three
+is very remarkable; and we are therefore surprised to find that the Anne
+who returned to Paris as the queen of Louis XII. was a very different
+person from the meek lady who had submitted to the ignorant and
+light-headed Charles. Not only did she insist upon and exercise her
+authority in Brittany, but she made the weight of her will felt in the
+affairs of the whole kingdom, pursued with ungenerous vindictiveness
+those who thwarted or opposed her, was jealous of her husband, of Madame
+de Bourbon, and of Louise de Savoie, mother of the young prince who one
+day was to be King Francois I. For her second husband, a man infinitely
+more worthy of respect than Charles, she appeared to have little
+tenderness. He was always considerate and good humored, admiring her and
+loving her even when she was domineering and almost insolent in her
+attitude toward him and toward his favorites. Her prudence and her
+regard for the decencies of life, too apt to be forgotten in the
+dissolute life now fostered by increased luxury and culture, were the
+only traits of Queen Anne that could be considered admirable. Her
+patronage of art, and of letters to a certain extent, her liberality to
+her favorite Bretons, had endeared her to a small circle; but neither
+France, which she hated, nor the best counsellors of the king, whom she
+thwarted and discomfited by her absolute ascendency over the king, had
+any cause to regret the early death of the queen, in 1514. It was
+fitting that, according to her wish, her heart should be buried in
+Brittany, while the body rested in Saint-Denis; for that heart had been
+unwaveringly Breton. To Louis she was _ma Bretonne_; and Breton she was
+in the most marked traits of her character; a woman of more than usual
+intellect and ability, with appreciation for art and literature, with a
+high sense of domestic virtue, and yet always hard, cold, shrewd, and
+narrow-minded.
+
+The contrast between the two Annes who fill so large a place in the
+closing years of the fifteenth century is as complete as it is striking.
+Both were so placed by the accident of birth and fortune as to have much
+power, for good or for ill, in the destiny of France. But while Anne de
+Bretagne showed herself merely a woman, ruled by personal motives,
+jealous of power in small things and blind to or unconscious of the
+far-reaching results that might spring from the exercise of that power,
+Anne de Beaujeu had the broad mind, the far-seeing and calculating
+intellect of the statesman. Her intellect, indeed, was essentially
+masculine: "Madame de Beaujeu," says a contemporary historian, "would
+have been worthy to wear the crown, by her prudence and by her courage,
+if nature had not excluded her from the sex in whom the right to rule
+was vested." Anne de Bretagne was self-willed and obstinate, seeking the
+gratification of mere caprice; Anne de Beaujeu was inflexible and
+tenacious of purpose, but that purpose had in view the consolidation of
+an empire, not the gratification of some whim or of some petty spite.
+One is tempted to compare the daughter of Louis XI. with that other
+great woman whose firm hand guided France through a perilous crisis in
+the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Blanche de Castille, too,
+had to rule and consolidate a kingdom menaced by feudal anarchy during
+the minority of the sovereign. But she had constitutional right to
+support her regency; Anne de Beaujeu had no such right, and the
+difficulties with which she had to contend, though sooner ended, were
+more serious in themselves, perhaps, than those domestic intrigues and
+rebellions which Blanche could face without having to guard her
+frontiers from powerful and hostile neighbors. By her political
+achievements Madame la Grande merits comparison with the mother of Saint
+Louis. And yet it is in the very success of her tortuous, unscrupulous,
+dishonest policy that we find witness against the character of Anne.
+Political trickery, political duplicity, however beneficent in its
+results, leaves us with a strong aversion to the trickster; even as we
+have an unconquerable distrust of and contempt for the spy, howbeit he
+has risked life and honor for love of country, even so we grudge our
+praise to those who, like Louis XI and his daughter, seek and attain
+great ends by despicable means, sacrificing truth, honor, sentiment, to
+win for the nation the provinces of a Marie de Bourgogne, who does not
+know how to govern them, or the bride of a Maximilian, who does not know
+how to keep hold of her.
+
+Great has been the change in France since Constance came from fair
+Provence to scandalize the monkish Robert's court; since Eleanor
+d'Aquitaine and her romantic troubadour friends taught France how to
+love gracefully and sing of love sweetly; since Mahaut d'Artois was a
+_paire de France_, with feudal power in her domain not to be questioned
+even by the sovereign; since Jeanne de Montfort, at the head of her
+knights, charged the mailed hosts. Provence has ceased either to
+scandalize or to enliven and instruct, for there is no more Provence
+save in name; no more gay and immoral troubadours; peers of France, you
+too are gone with "the snows of yesteryear," for when Charles VIII. was
+crowned at Rheims, the only lay peer, Philippe de Flandre, was not
+represented, the ancient domains of the other five having been annexed
+to the crown; and "the knights are dust." The little duchy of France,
+hedged about by vassals subject only in name, has grown into a great and
+almost unified kingdom, where provincial boundaries will soon be but
+imaginary lines on the map, a kingdom so rich and powerful, thanks to
+Louis XI. and Anne de Beaujeu, that it can afford to let a childish
+Charles VIII. dissipate its forces and its treasure in Italian wars,
+bringing back nothing more precious than the memory of the culture, the
+art, the restless new learning that make Florence, Venice, Milan
+glorious in this day of Renaissance. And France will cherish these
+memories of Italy, will kindle with enthusiasm for all these new
+_cinque-cento_ marvels, will emulate and eclipse Italy. The monarchy is
+now the central power, the unquestioned power, in France, for which
+blessed consummation France must thank some of the women whose stories
+we have told no less than her kings. For without Blanche de Castille, no
+Saint Louis; without Jeanne d'Arc, no Charles VII.; without Madame de
+Beaujeu, no Charles VIII. Soon the state will be the king, long before
+boastful Louis XIV. thunders forth, _L'etat, c'est moi_ Already the eyes
+of all France are drawn to the court. There power resides, there
+literature and the arts will flourish, no longer leading a troubled and
+precarious existence. At the most brilliant court in Christendom a
+Francis I. no longer will indite Latin hymns, like the good Robert, but
+a cynical _souvent une femme varie_, while his sister, _La marguerite
+des marguerites de Navarre_, will rival Boccaccio with her fashionable
+tales of gallant and amorous gentlemen and ladies.
+
+The age of blood and iron passes away, and with it must pass away the
+type of woman we have seen in the pages of this book. In our haste we
+might say that the passing age had not been one favorable to the
+development of feminine character, and that the new age will give the
+world women not only more cultivated and morally better, but also
+greater and of more potent influence upon the life of the world; and yet
+we must not forget that the very conditions of the Middle Ages most
+oppressive to women in general did of necessity bring to the fore women
+of strong character. A feudal chatelaine, if she were a Mahaut d'Artois,
+could rule, could make her mark in history; a queen of France, in an age
+when physical strength seemed essential in warfare, could subdue her
+enemies and make herself a great queen, if she were a Blanche de
+Castille. Under the new order, however, woman's activities and talents
+will be directed into channels more appropriate to her sex; in
+literature, in art, in social life, in diplomacy, woman will now play
+her part, more quietly, perhaps, but not with less far-reaching
+influence on the history of France than if she actually controlled the
+armies of France. The really great women from this time forth will be
+found not on the throne but in the salon. In writing of Catherine de'
+Medici we should have to tell a great deal of the history of France, in
+writing of Anne d'Autriche, less; in writing of Madame de Maintenon,
+still less; but the life of such a woman as Blanche de Castille is the
+history of France, and in the life of such a woman as Jeanne d'Arc is
+the very spirit and soul of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+PREFACE
+
+I. IN THE DAYS OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS.
+II. FAMOUS LOVERS.
+III. WOMEN IN EARLY PROVENCAL AND FRENCH LITERATURE.
+IV. WOMEN IN THE AGE OF SAINT LOUIS.
+V. BLANCHE DE CASTILLE AS REGENT OF FRANCE.
+VI. THE MOTHER AND THE WIFE OF A SAINT.
+VII. THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY AND LOVE.
+VIII. MARIE DE BRABANT AND MAHAUT D'ARTOIS.
+IX. JEANNE DE MONTFORT.
+X. AT THE COURT OF THE MAD KING.
+XI. CHRISTINE DE PISAN.
+XII. THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE.
+XIII. THE TRIUMPH AND MARTYRDOM OF JEANNE D'ARC.
+XIV. THE RISE OF THE MONARCHY.
+XV. ANNE DE BEAUJEU: THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOM.
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+Odette de Champdivers and Charles, by Albrecht de Vriendt.
+Le droit du seigneur, by Lucien Melingue.
+Domestic interior in France, twelfth century, by S. Baron.
+Ladies hunting, by Henri Genois.
+Blanche of Castille, mother of Saint Louis, by Moreau de Tours.
+Jeanne d'Arc, by Jean J. Scherrer.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Women of Mediaeval France, by Pierce Butler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32695.txt or 32695.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/6/9/32695/
+
+Produced by Renald Levesque
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.