er Jean-Paul Laurens, long in the Luxembourg, is a
graphic presentation of this unhappy couple, clinging to each other in
the poor, bare splendor of the very early mediaeval throne-room, the
overturned great tapers of the excommunication service on the floor
before them, the smoke rising like anathema, and the last of the
implacable ministers of the Church departing through the open doorway.
Every one deserted them, as though plague-stricken; only two poor
domestics remained to serve them, and they purified by fire every vessel
from which the unhappy monarch had taken food or drink. But Berthe was
_enceinte_, and the king loved her, and so clung to her and would not
obey. One morning as he went to pray, according to his custom, at the
door of the church of Saint-Barthelemy, into which he was forbidden to
enter, Abbon, Abbe de Fleury, followed by two women of the palace,
carrying a great silver-gilt plate covered with a linen cloth,
approached him, and announced that Berthe had been delivered. Then he
uncovered the plate:

"See!" he exclaimed, "the effects of your disobedience to the decrees of
the Church, and the seal of anathema on the fruit of your guilty love!"

And Robert recoiled in horror before a little monster with the head and
neck of a duck! (_Canard_, it may be noted, in French, signifies both a
duck and a highly improbable story.)

So the poor queen was repudiated, and Robert married Constance, daughter
of the Comte de Toulouse, who made his life a burden to him. He hid
himself from her to say his prayers, and feared her so much that he did
not hesitate to deny his charities and good deeds to her,--though he had
such a horror of falsehood, that he had made a casket of crystal,
mounted with gold, but in which he was careful not to put any holy
relic, so that those who took their oaths on it before him might not
perjure themselves.

His son Henri I, who succeeded him, married a daughter of the Grand Duke
of Russia, in order that he might be certain of not taking a wife within
the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church. This princess,
Anne, claimed to descend through her mother, daughter of the Emperor
Romanus II, from Philip of Macedon.

The queen Constance brought with her from the Midi some of those
troubadours whose romantic airs and graceful verses were so appreciated
in the little courts of the south of France and, later, in the gloomy
castles of the nobles of the north. Great was the prev