leave, after the forty days fixed by the feudal laws for the service of a vassal. They were obliged only to remain so long; but, in general, honour and chivalry, especially when religious motives were superadded, retained them near their chief, till the object for which he had called them together was accomplished, Thibaud who loved the queen, soothed his passions by verses, and all the romantic folly of the times. He could not bear this long absence from her sight, and asked leave of absence, which, not being able to obtain, he went without it.
The king, whether he knew, or only suspected the motive for this disobedience, or that the action alone sufficed to irritate him, dropped some menaces which determined the count to rid himself of a rival, and forestall the rage of a superior. Such is nearly the foundation on which M. Paris rests the conjecture that Lewis was poisoned by Thibaud. No suspicion of knowledge or connivance was ever cast on Blanche. They had nine sons and two daughters; five only of the former were living at the death of their father, and all in their infancy. Blanche justified the choice of her husband; she did all that was right and proper in her new character.
From the absence, or flight of the nobility, many of them refusing, upon various pretences, to attend her son's coronation, she found herself in a species of solitude; but, putting her trust in Heaven, she exerted her utmost powers, in despite of discouragement.
"It was a woman, and a foreign woman," says M. Gaillard, "who was seen, for the first time, under the third race of our monarchs, to dare possess herself of the regency; but this woman was the grand-daughter of Henry the second and Eleanor of Aquitain, it was
