ul women in the world." Accused of an intrigue with a gentleman
of the Court, she was imprisoned in the Chateau-Gaillard, where she
remained, with shorn head, until, shortly after Charles ascended the
throne, the Pope declared the marriage null. Then, whilst the king
wedded another, the sad Blanche exchanged her castle prison-house
for a convent one, where she died a year after she had taken the vows.
There is no reason for supposing that Mahaut was at the wedding of
Blanche's successor save in the imagination of the artist; but for him
the inclusion of such a tragic figure would add a dramatic touch to
the representation of an otherwise conventional ceremony.

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF CHARLES LE BEL AND MARIE OF LUXEMBURG.

Grandes Chrons. de France, Bib. Nat.

_To face page 100._]

It almost takes us aback to read that in Mahaut's domain of Artois
there were at least eighty hospitals and thirty lazar-houses, without
counting those attached to the monasteries. But these numbers will not
surprise us so much when we remember that almost every small community
had its little hospital, used not only for the sick and as a lying-in
hospital, but also as a shelter for the poor and the pilgrim. In the
towns they were often built and supported by the Corporations or by
rich merchants. Evidently some were in the nature of hospitals for
incurables, for there were special clauses in the deeds of gift
providing that a certain specified number of beds were to be kept for
the sick until they were either cured or released by death. Besides
building two hospitals in the County of Burgundy in fulfilment of the
dying wishes of her husband, Mahaut built and maintained two in her
own County of Artois. The one at Hesdin was the more important, and we
can get some idea of it from the documents of the time. The deed
relating to it tells that over the large entrance gate there was
carved in stone a figure of St. John, the patron of hospitals and of
the needy generally, with a poor man and woman on either side of him.
The principal ward was 160 feet long and 34 feet wide, with walls 16
feet high ending in a gabled roof, with two windows in each gable, and
this, coupled with the fact that the sick were sometimes laid on
cushions by the open windows, goes to show that what we pride
ourselves on as a special discovery in modern hygiene--the benefit of
fresh air--was known and applied even in what we are wont to consider
a very benighted age i