bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to be trying to fill. Struck by the bird’s action, he carefully marked the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from his second pilgrimage.[362] This abbey, with a nunnery founded near it eight years later--in 1128--by his countess Hildegard, on the site of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,[363] became the nucleus round which gathered in after-years a suburb known as Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil home-occupations, however, could not long satisfy the restless temper of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in 1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded: his meeting at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror.[364] The old and the young penitent completed their pilgrimage together; but only the former lived to see his home again; and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father’s feet. “Conquered art thou--conquered, conquered!” shouted the old count, kicking his prostrate son. “Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my father; but unconquered by all beside!” The spirited answer touched Fulk’s paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.[365] The power which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by right; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk’s conquests of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the acquisition of Montbazon and St.-Aignan.[366] When at the close of 1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais, and took it.[367] One more stronghold still remained to be won in the valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, “straight up to heaven”; range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up