the five kings of France, in other respects very
different,--himself, St. Louis, Louis XII, Henry IV., and Louis XVI.,--
who were particularly distinguished for sympathetic kindness and anxiety
for the popular welfare. Robert had a kindly feeling for the weak and
poor; not only did he protect them, on occasion, against the powerful,
but he took pains to conceal their defaults, and, in his church and at
his table, he suffered himself to be robbed without complaint, that he
might not have to denounce and punish the robbers. "Wherefore at his
death," says his biographer Helgaud, "there were great mourning and
intolerable grief; a countless number of widows and orphans sorrowed for
the many benefits received from him; they did beat their breasts and went
to and from his tomb, crying, 'Whilst Robert was king and ordered all, we
lived in peace, we had nought to fear. May the soul of that pious
father, that father of the senate, that father of all good, be blest and
saved! May it mount up and dwell forever with Jesus Christ, the King of
kings!"

[Illustration: Robert had a Kindly Feeling for the Weak and Poor----313]

Though not so pious or so good as Robert, his son, Henry I., and his
grandson, Philip I., were neither more energetic nor more glorious kings.
During their long reigns (the former from 1031 to 1060, and the latter
from 1060 to 1108) no important and well-prosecuted design distinguished
their government. Their public life was passed at one time in petty
warfare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals; at
another in acts of capricious intervention in the quarrels of their
vassals amongst themselves. Their home-life was neither less irregular
nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. King
Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy;
and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent,
avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state that
he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, "Take
care that Constance know nought of it." After Robert's death, Constance,
having become regent for her eldest son, Henry I., forthwith conspired to
dethrone him, and to put in his place her second son, Robert, who was her
favorite. Henry, on being delivered by his mother's death from her
tyranny and intrigues, was thrice married; but his first two marriages
with two German princesses, one the daughte