senting a
nun," lay the body of the unhappy Blanche, once Queen of France in
right.

Her companion in debauchery, Marguerite de Bourgogne, met a fate more
suddenly tragic, though surely not more pathetic. Her marriage with
Louis le Hutin could have been dissolved, of course, on the score of
adultery; but Louis preferred less public methods. Having become king,
on the death of his father, not many months after Marguerite's disgrace,
he desired to find another wife; so Marguerite was put to death in the
Chateau Gaillard, being smothered, it is said, between two mattresses.

The third of the daughters-in-law of Philippe le Bel, the Countess
Jeanne de Poitiers, was more fortunate than her sister and Marguerite.
When the three had been arrested she was separated from the other two
and sent to Dourdan. Her character seems to have been better formed than
that of Blanche, and she had not indulged in the excesses proved against
Blanche and Marguerite. Mahaut was from the first firmly convinced of
her innocence, and sent frequent messages of consolation and sympathy to
her during her confinement in Dourdan. Although she had been aware of
the evil practices of her sister and her sister-in-law, it could hardly
be held an unpardonable crime for her to have refrained from
talebearing. In one of the rhymed chronicles, which gives a graphic
account of this tragedy, Jeanne is represented as confessing her small
share in the wrong and pleading for mercy before Philippe le Bel: "Sire,
for God's sake hear me! Who is it that accuses me? I say I am a good
woman, without guilt, without sin or shame." She demanded an
investigation, and the king granted her request. While she was confined
a strict inquiry was held into her conduct, and the result was that, at
Christmastide, 1314, she was adjudged innocent, and came back to her
husband, "whereof there was great joy throughout France." She was to
become Queen of France not long afterward, and then to be widowed; but
during the rest of her life there was no blot on her good name, and no
interruption in the affectionate relations existing between herself and
her mother. As Countess of Poitiers, as Queen of France, and as dowager
Queen and Duchess of Burgundy, she visited Mahaut frequently,
accompanied her in journeys, and exchanged gifts with her.

The scene of the orgies indulged in by Blanche de la Marche and
Marguerite de Bourgogne was long pointed out in Paris and became an
object of peculia