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 h