down the depositions, that
the treaty in question had been written by one Jacques Rondelet, clerk
of Arras, at the dictation of Jeanne de Divion, on her recent visit to
Arras. Moreover, the countess had the wisdom to get these witnesses to
testify that they had not been coerced by her but testified of their own
free will and accord. Then she interrogated Jacques Rondelet, who
confirmed all that the servants had said, adding that he had written at
dictation, and under oath of secrecy, from a document which Jeanne de
Divion would not let him see.

The proofs of the forgery, one would think, were sufficient before the
cause came to trial; yet, after a statement of the principal allegations
on both sides, the king adjourned the hearing to another day. But that
day was not to dawn for Mahaut. On November 23, 1329, the countess was
at Poissy, where she dined with the king, going on to the convent of
Maubuisson to pass the night, and thence to Paris next day. Here she
fell suddenly ill; and her own physician, Thomas le Miesier, was sent
for in all haste from Arras. The crude or dangerous remedies of the
medicine of the day were powerless to relieve Mahaut; phlebotomy and
purgatives probably served but to exhaust her already depleted strength,
and the physicians recognized that her end was at hand. Couriers rode in
haste from the Hotel d'Artois in Paris to Queen Jeanne, to the Duke of
Burgundy, to the Count of Flanders, on the 26th, and as many as three to
the king next day, bearing news of the great countess's peril. Jeanne
came to her mother with all speed, but the end had come before she could
reach Paris; the good Countess of Artois breathed her last on November
27th.

She who had expended considerable sums in the pomp of funerals, tombs,
and effigies for others was buried very simply, at her own request, in
the Abbey of Maubuisson, where her grave was marked at first by a plain,
flat copper plate, hardly raised above the level of the pavement. In
accordance with a custom not unusual in her day, the body was opened and
the heart taken to the Franciscan Church in Paris, where it was
interred, as she had directed, _juxta sepulturam Roberti carissimi filii
mei_--"beside the grave of my very dear son Robert."

Judging from the features of a statue representing Mahaut, which was
formerly in a church in Arras and was copied in miniature by an artist
of the seventeenth century, the countess was a woman of large and
commanding f