y 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 s