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 mak