[56] Lüdtke has endeavored, by a very carefully conducted comparison, to show the probability of an historical foundation for The Erl of Tolous in the relations of Bernard I, Count of Barcelona, with the Empress Judith, second wife of Louis le Débonnaire. By the influence of this beautiful and clever woman, Bernard, son of the William of Orange of romance, and later in his life Count or Duke of Toulouse, as his father had been, was made imperial chamberlain or prime minister, with the object of forwarding the aspirations which the empress entertained for her son Karl. Hugo, Count of Tours, and Matfrid, Count of Orleans, partisans of Lothair, stand for the empress's two lovers and enemies. Judith was accused of adultery with Bernard, and shut up in a monastery. At an assembly of the estates of the empire in 831, she declared herself prepared to refute the charge against her, and no accuser appearing, did so, when required, by an oath, after which she was restored to her rights as wife and empress. Bernard, though already incidentally purged by the empress's oath, some months subsequently asked the privilege of a duel with anybody that was disposed to inculpate him, and, no such person offering, in turn cleared himself by an oath. See Lüdtke, p. 98 ff, p. 209 ff. Hildegard, Louis's mother, according to tradition, labored under the same imputation as Judith, his wife; a parallel to the case of Gunild and her mother Emma. The story of Hildegard (Grimms, Deutsche Sagen, II, 102) has some resemblance to that of Repsima, Les Mille et un Jours, p. 265, Paris, 1840, and Jonathan Scott's Arabian Nights, VI, 396, 'Adventures of the Cauzce,' etc. [57] Grundtvig, admitting that the time has not come for anything more, sketches an hypothesis of the evolution and transmission of the story, "as a mere experiment," I, 203 f. 60 KING ESTMERE #a.# Percy's Reliques, edition of 1794, I, 64. #b.# Reliques, edition of 1765, I, 58. 'King Estmere' occurred at page 249 of Percy's folio manuscript, but the three leaves on which it was written were "unfortunately torn out" by Percy to send to the press, and the genuine form of the ballad thereby put beyond recovery. In the second and later editions of the Reliques the editor professes to give the ballad from two copies ("containing very great variations," 1794), one of them being that of the folio. But here and elsewhere Percy employs a singular periphrasis, as he has explained to us in the preface to the Reliques, and means only that he has amended his original more or less. Notwithstanding the seemingly explicit language, there is no second copy at all.[58]