price of further exactions. The first thirteen
heretics were burned at Orleans in 1022; one of them had been the
confessor of Queen Constance, and as he passed her on his way to the
stake, she put out one of his eyes with a long rod she held in her hand.
Nevertheless, the historian Duruy considers that this certain mental
movement, these deviations of the human intelligence from the beaten
track, demonstrated that the period in which all thought seemed dead had
passed, and that the first Renaissance began in this (eleventh)
century.

A more recent writer distinguishes this century also by "that revolution
in feudal France," the development of the commune. The great social fact
was the disappearance of the three classes, serfs, semi-freemen, and
free men (_libres_), which had existed since the ninth century, and
their unity under subjection to the seigneur. This domination of the
seigneur, at first justified by the protection afforded, lost its
authority when it began to consult only its self-interest, and, toward
the close of the century, stirred up revolts which led to the
establishment of all kinds of popular associations, guilds,
confraternities, charities, communities, etc.

The only church erected in Paris during the thirty years' reign of Henri
I was that of Sainte-Marine, founded about 1036, and whose patron,
according to the story, was a young virgin named Marine, who conceived a
strong desire to be a monk. So she disguised herself as a man, and
became Brother Marin in a convent. One of her duties was to go to the
city for provisions, with an ox-cart, and on her journeys she frequently
passed the night in the house of the Seigneur de Pandoche, whose
daughter was found to be with child. To screen her lover, a soldier, she
laid the blame on Brother Marin, and he was accordingly driven from his
monastery. However, he took the child, which was sent him, nourished it,
and the monks, touched by his meekness, finally received him back in
their fold. Not till his death was his secret discovered, when he was
interred with great religious pomp and canonized under his true name.
Consequently, in the church of Sainte-Marine were celebrated all the
forced marriages of couples found living together without the sanction
of law, the public authorities compelling them to appear before the cure
of Sainte-Marine, who wedded them with a ring of straw, slipped on the
bride's finger.

[Illustration: BATH-ROOM OF A LADY OF QUALITY