d 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."