ore 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 Fran