ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk; but he never waited till they were matured; he never stopped to count their cost; and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse; always ready to throw himself into a new project, but generally lacking patience and perseverance enough to carry it through; harassed by numberless conflicting cares;[307] breaking every engagement as soon as made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to keep long to anything. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,” might have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo’s whole race. The house of Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main strength of their rivals: thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters of the two houses have a bearing upon English history; for the quarrel that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable steadiness, determination and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers. [303] Richer, l. iv. c. 79. [304] Richer, l. iv. cc. 90–94. His account of the war, and indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely strange and confused; it has been examined by M. Léon Aubineau in a “Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I.” in the _Mém. de la Soc. Archéol. de Touraine_, vol. iii. (1845–1847), pp. 41–94, but the result is far from convincing. [305] He is called “puerulus” at the time of his mother’s second marriage, _i.e._ in 995–996. _Hist. Franc. Fragm._ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally. [306] _Vita Burchardi_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 354, 355. Will. Jumièges, l. v. c. 14 (_ib._ p. 189; Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 255). Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. See note A at the end of chapter. [307] See the character given of him by R. Glaber, l. iii. cc. 2, 9 (_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. x. pp. 27, 40).