Béarn and the Pyrenees : $b A legendary tour to the country of Henri QuatreCostello, Louisa Stuart
History
Béarn and the Pyrenees : $b A legendary tour to the country of Henri Quatre
Costello, Louisa Stuart
Béarn (France) -- Description and travel; Pyrenees -- Description and travel
This is the William, known by his romantic adventures as "The Armed
Hermit," who, no doubt, disgusted with the tyranny of the Church, whose
members at that time never ceased to interfere with the monarchs of
Europe, resolved to abandon his kingdom, and embrace a life of quiet, as
he supposed, "in some _horrible desert_." He was encouraged in the idea
by interested persons, and _feigning to die_, left a will, by which his
young daughter, Elionore, became the heiress of Aquitaine; he then
secretly quitted the court, directing his steps to the shrine of St.
James, in Galicia, where he joined a holy hermit, and put himself under
his tuition. By _diabolic temptation_ it seems, however, that he could
never be content in any of the deserts; where, still clothed in armour,
_cap-à-pié_, he endeavoured in vain to forget his belligerent
propensities, for, every now and then, when he heard of a siege toward,
he would suddenly sally forth, and having assisted in the skirmish,
again seized with a fit of repentant devotion, would hurry back to some
desolate retreat, and endeavour, by penitence and fasts, to obliterate
the sin he had committed.
His death was attended by so many miracles that it became necessary to
canonize him; and orders of hermit monks rose up in every quarter,
bearing his name of Guillemins, the chief of which were the Blanc
Manteaux of Paris. The example of sanctity he had set in the latter part
of his life seemed to have been lost on the turbulent and coquettish
Queen of the Court of Love, his daughter, Elionore, and to have been
also sufficiently disregarded by his grandsons. Not that Elionore
neglected to build and endow churches and monasteries in every part of
her dominions, particularly at Poitiers; and, probably, she considered
all offences wiped out by so doing: not excepting her criminal project,
recorded by Bouchet, of quitting her husband, Louis of France, and
"_espousing the Sultan Saladin_, with whose image and portraiture she
had fallen in love."
Whatever motives Louis le Jeune had in getting rid of his powerful wife,
policy could not be one; for never was a more foolish business; he did
not, perhaps, contemplate, in his shortsightedness, that she would marry
his rival, and carry all her possessions to the crown of England; but he
was sure that by dissolving his marriage he was injuring France. The
account of the state of the great heiress, insulted and injured in so
vital a point, is piteous enough, and not unlike, in position, to the
case of Queen Catherine when repudiated by Henry VIII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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