And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in the forest of CompiÈgne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity even during his lifetime; he seized the king's bridle, and boldly petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul, letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling refugee, the king's horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:

“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king's chase? Give back that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”

The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away, and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides, when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S. Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles, hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his poor. So stands the legend.

A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of Mucius ScÆvola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that Mucius ScÆvola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann wand the storied, moss-grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that FranÇois I.'s heroic Tout est perdu fors l'honneur! was only the poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I to wear the crown of France, let him stand [pg 396] forth and take it”? True, Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand of the hangman publicly in the market-place. We will deal in like manner with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S. Marcoul's hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of the chÂteau of CompiÈgne.

The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons, whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting-lodge the scene of atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at CompiÈgne and died, while the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and, afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.

Clotaire II. lived many years at CompiÈgne, much beloved for his gentle and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen's Cross. The king was out hunting, one hot summer's day in the year of grace 631, and emerging from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow. Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful symbol, and raised on the road from CompiÈgne to Verberie the stately pile called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.

Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at CompiÈgne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless, indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le [pg 397] Debonnaire lived chiefly at Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode, befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour's song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages of man's ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic CÆsar was not proof against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls, till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it stood.

The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold-blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent his father, bound hand and foot, to CompiÈgne, where he was kept a close prisoner. Lothair's brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings for himself, they set out for CompiÈgne, stormed the fortress, and set free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him, and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.

In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at CompiÈgne to receive the ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their master. Charles did a great deal to improve CompiÈgne; the old chÂteau of Clovis, which was no better than a hunting-lodge grown into a fortress, he threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town, but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the greater part of their respective reigns at CompiÈgne, and added to the number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now, my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people knew it, and hated [pg 398] Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!” the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.

Philip II.'s occupation of CompiÈgne, which in those days of simple faith, when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a motive power in the great movements that enlist men's energies and direct them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy winding-sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,183 by Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold, inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald to the Abbey of S. Corneille at CompiÈgne, is thus described in the procÈs-verbal of the translation, given at full length in the Grandes Chroniques: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (aunes) in length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff, esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.

In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been considered mortal, sent as a thank-offering for her recovery a costly shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has pleased us to place in a shrine (chasse) of gold, enriched with precious stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (linge), in which the body of our Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (suaire), according to the holy evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their Lord had lain wrapped in this winding-sheet. The union of mystical devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which they were hastening, [pg 399] and the transfer of this sacred memento of the Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems, the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear, home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright and glowing past.184

Philip's son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at CompiÈgne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during the king's absence.

When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his crown to the fair Agnes de MÉranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile the ill-fated love of the king and her own short-lived happiness, it was at CompiÈgne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.

But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of CompiÈgne is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople, before starting for the Holy Land came to CompiÈgne to swear fealty to the King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope's legate at S. Sophia (1204). He immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new-found honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople, but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband's election to the throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin's grief was inconsolable; he laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople. Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to “the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon Joanice, full of [pg 400] wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the emperor's release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power, or any man's, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was taken for an announcement of Baldwin's death, and universally accepted as such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited eye-witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being afterwards made into a drinking-cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood by gloating over the spectacle of his victim's agony. Years went by and nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin's death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.

Baldwin, finding his secret discovered, fled to a distant and more inaccessible part of the forest; he was tracked thither, and again fled; but the pursuers finally got possession of him, and dragged him by main force into the neighboring town; the people flocked eagerly to see him, and with one voice they proclaimed him their long-lost Baldwin, welcoming him with joyful acclamations as a father returned from the dead. Whether this popular welcome merely emboldened the real Baldwin to confess his identity and, as a necessary consequence, claim his rights, or whether it suggested to the false one the idea of simulating the person whom he resembled and was taken for, it is impossible to say, but at any rate from this period we no longer see him dragged, but marching forth, of his own free-will, from town to town, and surrounded [pg 401] by all the paraphernalia of an injured claimant. His march was not, however, one of unbroken triumph; the town of Flanders refused to believe in him, and indignantly scouted himself and his followers as a band of impostors. The daughters of the dead man, Jeanne and Marguerite, refused to believe in him, and denounced him as a malefactor whose aim was to stir up disorder in the state for his own ambitious purposes. But Jeanne's government was odious to the people; to escape from her harsh and cruel rule they would have willingly adopted any claimant who came with a fair show of right to enlist their credulity. Jeanne knew this, and at once took strong measures to put down the movement. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Before many months the country was in a blaze, divided into two camps, one of believers, the other disbelievers, but both ready to devour each other to prove and disprove their special theories. A witness whose testimony went hard against the claimant was that of the old bailiff of Quesnoy; he had known Baldwin from a child, and mourned over him like a father, and, when he now appeared at the castle gates and demanded admittance, the old man refused to open to him, and vowed solemnly that he was not his master, but a base impostor. The conduct of this stubborn sceptic drew forth a pathetic appeal from the claimant. “I find,” he says, “more cruel enemies in my own house than in the land of strangers. Flanders, my mother, dost thou repulse thy son whom Greece and Macedonia received with open arms! I escaped from Adrianople through the carelessness of my guards; I fell into the hands of barbarians, who dragged me to the distant plains of Asia; there, like a vile slave, I, who had wielded the sceptre, was condemned to dig the earth; I dug until some German merchants, to whom I confided my story, ransomed me, and sent me back to my country, and lo! I arrive and show myself, and you repulse me! My daughter Jeanne refuses to own me in order not to resign her rank and subside into the subject of a court!” Unmoved by this touching denunciation, Jeanne persisted in disowning him, but, failing to prove her case, she referred it to Louis VII. of France. Louis, much interested in the extraordinary story, willingly undertook the arbitration. The claimant, on his side, testified great satisfaction on hearing that his fate was placed in the hands of a wise and powerful monarch, who was sure to prove a just and discerning judge; he set out in high spirits to CompiÈgne, where the king was then residing. Attired in the violet robes of a hermit, and bearing a white wand in his hand, he entered the august assembly with a countenance full of unblushing assurance, saluted the King of France with an air of proud equality, and noticed the barons and knights by a courtly inclination of the head. Louis, who had carefully studied the case, conducted the examination himself; he put many subtle and perplexing questions to the supposed Baldwin concerning events which had passed in his youth, and which it was thought impossible he could have learned from any one he had seen since his return, and the claimant answered accurately with an assurance that carried conviction with it. The examination lasted several hours, and, the closer it pressed him, the more triumphantly it established his identity. The witnesses who boasted of being able to confound the imposture in the twinkling of an eye were themselves confounded; [pg 402] they withdrew covered with confusion, and vowing inwardly that “this man was sold to the devil,” as only the father of lies could have told him so many hidden things, and borne him to success through such a quagmire of difficulties. There was, indeed, much conflicting evidence forthcoming. Henri, his brother, was dead, but the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg, cousins and contemporaries of Baldwin's, swore that the claimant was the real man; on the other hand, sixteen knights of unimpeachable honor swore to having seen the real man dead on the field of Adrianople. The king, after hearing with great patience, and weighing most impartially what was said on both sides, declared in favor of the claimant. The excitement was indescribable when he rose to pronounce the verdict; but at this point the Bishop of Beauvais stepped from his seat, and, holding up his right hand, adjured Louis to suspend for one moment the final words while he put a few short questions to the hermit. The king consented; a deathlike silence fell upon the assembly, and the bishop, going close up to the hermit, who was seated on a chair in the centre of the great hall, addressed him thus in a loud voice:

“Answer me three questions: 1st, In what place did you render homage to King Philip Augustus? 2d, By whom were you invested with the order of knighthood? 3d, Where did you marry Marie de Champagne?”

The claimant stammered, grew pale, and, after a vain attempt to fence with the questions, broke down. Extraordinary as it may seem, he had never given a thought to these prominent events in the life of Baldwin of Constantinople, or foreseen that he would be questioned concerning them. The enthusiastic sympathy of the court was changed in an instant to rage and scorn. Sentence of death was pronounced on the hermit of Glaucon on a charge of high treason, conspiring, fraud, perjury, and the long list of iniquities that make up the sum of a claimant's budget. But having thus far acquitted himself of his office, the king handed over the criminal to Jeanne to be dealt with as she thought fit. In those rough and ready days there were no back-stairs for a plucky claimant to escape by, no counsel to save him with a nonsuit, or such like modern convenience; the make-believe Baldwin was without more ado hung up between two dogs on the market-place of Flanders. Some chroniclers throw uncomfortable doubts on the justice of the execution; a few maintain that this was the true man, and anathematize Jeanne as a parricide who sacrificed her own father to the love of power. PÈre Cahour, who is certainly a conscientious writer, speaks of her, on the other hand, as a just and upright woman, utterly incapable of so diabolical a crime, and stoutly vindicates the evidence of the sixteen knights, though how he adapts it to the belief in Baldwin's capture by Joanice, which appears to have been general after the battle of Adrianople, it is difficult to see. The Chronique de Meyer, again, denounces Jeanne as an execrable monster, and declares that the man who was hanged was the real Baldwin. Clearly claimants have been always a troublesome race to deal with; even hanging does not seem to make an end of them, for their claims outlive them, and leave to historians a legacy of doubt and discord that is exceedingly difficult to settle.

The passage of S. Louis at CompiÈgne is marked by an event characteristic of him and of his time. He had ransomed from the Venetians at [pg 403] at an enormous price the crown of thorns of our Saviour. To do it public honor he carried it bare-headed and bare-footed from the wood of Vincennes to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and thence to the Sainte Chapelle, that gemlike little shrine which had been raised expressly to receive the priceless relic, and whose beauty is invested with a fresh interest since it escaped the fire of the Communists; the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice were burning so close to it that the flames might have licked its walls, yet not even one of its wonderful stained-glass windows was injured.

Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. CompiÈgne in the days of the saintly king was the refuge of God's poor, of the sick and the sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what time he could steal from the affairs of state.

To Be Continued.