rs to slay
Hugues whenever and wherever they found him: they found him and murdered
him in the very presence of the king. Robert was too weak to resist
effectively, made his peace with the queen, and gave himself up more and
more to religious devotions.

He used to go to the church of Saint-Denis and sing with the choir and
challenge the singers to a trial of skill. When Constance one day asked
him to compose some song in her honor, he responded with a stave of his
hymn: _O! Constantia martyrum_ (O! faith and constancy of the martyrs),
with which she was as well pleased as if the reference had not been a
bit ambiguous. On a certain occasion, as he was besieging a castle on
the feast of Saint Hippolytus, to whom he professed a special devotion,
he left the army and repaired to Saint-Denis to sing hymns in honor of
the saint. While he was thus engaged, the walls of the castle fell, and
the king's troops entered in; a manifest reward for his singing _Agnus
Dei, dona nobis pacem!_ While he was one day at prayers, shedding many
tears, as was his wont, the vain and worldly-minded Constance adorned
his lance with silver ornaments. The king, finding this sinful waste,
looked out of his door and saw a poor man near by. He sent him off to
get some sort of tool to cut off the decorations, shut himself up in a
room with the fellow, stripped the lance of its silver gewgaws, and gave
them to him, bidding him begone in haste lest the queen see him.
Constance asked what had become of the silver, and Robert "swore by the
Lord's name, though not in earnest," that he knew not what had become of
it.

In spite of this pious perjury, we are told that Robert had a great
horror of lying. The proof of this statement is very interesting. He had
a reliquary made of crystal, set in a golden case, and containing no
relic. Upon this his nobles, ignorant of the deceit, could swear without
danger of risking their souls, in case the oath was false. And as common
folk had souls, too, and might endanger them by false swearing, he had a
similar reliquary, made of silver, in which was deposited nothing more
sacred than an egg. He was constantly endeavoring to shield the petty
malefactors whom his unworldliness had tempted to wrongdoing, and whom
Constance would have punished. It was his habit to have the poor fed
from his table, and on one occasion he had a fellow concealed under the
table at his feet. The man found time between bites to cut off a heavy