The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to his real character and to their own best interests that they drove him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift, from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella; and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to be the famous “Durandal”--the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving his own dishonoured brand in its place. [1069] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 16 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 336). _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 299. [1070] Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. cc. 13, 14 (pp. 335, 336). [1071] _Ib._ c. 16 (p. 336). [1072] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 278.