, SOFA OF SILVER;
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

After an engraving by Saint-Jean.]

Henri's son, Philippe I, contrived, like his grandfather, to get himself
excommunicated because of his marriage, but for the space of ten years
he seems to have concerned himself but little about the wrath of the
Church. He had repudiated his wife, Berthe, and taken Bertrade, whom he
had carried off from her husband, Foulque, Comte d'Angers. Finally,
wearied of her, he presented himself as a penitent, barefooted, before
the council of 1104, Bertrade doing the same; they protested their
horror of their past conduct, their resolve to sin no more, and were
accordingly absolved. It was this monarch who, by his unseemly jest
concerning William the Conqueror, of whom he was both jealous and
afraid, nearly brought down upon the Parisians again another Norman.
"When is that fat man going to be delivered?" inquired Philippe, with
the delicate humor of the Middle Ages. To which the Conqueror replied
that he was coming to Paris for his "churching," with ten thousand
lances instead of tapers. And, as was his fashion, he started to keep
his word: his advance guard was burning villages up to the gates of
Paris, when, according to the story, his horse stepped on some hot
cinders at Mantes and in his sudden recoil so injured the monarch that
he died soon after at Rouen.

The great national assemblies which Charlemagne had so often consulted,
and even those convocations of the great lords and bishops which had
been so frequent in the tenth century, fell into disuse under the
Capetiens, in consequence of the rise of the feudal power and the
decline of the royal authority. The king, by his constant donations to
his _leudes_ or great vassals, had, in course of time, very nearly
stripped himself of domains, and these _benefices_ were retained by the
lords and made hereditary in their own families. It was the same with
the public charges and the titles of dukes, counts, etc., which carried
with them an authority delegated by the prince, and which ended by
passing entirely out of his hands. Charlemagne had been able to check
the greed and ambition of the feudal lords, but his feebler successors
were unable to do so. Even the right of coining money was claimed by the
great seigneurs, and in this century there were no less than a hundred
and fifty in France who exercised this privilege. Most of them refused
to receive any coinage but their own, and the confusion and