the childless Jeanne, now cut off from all hope of offspring, his wife would be Countess of Flanders, and, in accordance with the usage of the day, he himself would share her throne. If this were matter of no little rejoicing for the inhabitants of that country, it was no less a source of consternation to the French King, who foresaw in Bourchard, Count of Flanders, an emulator of Robert the Frisian, and from that moment he determined to crush him. It was owing to his influence that the Countess Jeanne first showed herself Bourchard's foe, and if Philip himself was not the fabricator of the rumours which blasted his after career, fortune had placed in his hands a deadly poison which he did not scruple to employ. It was in the gossiping ante-chambers of the Lateran palace that these rumours first took shape, and whatever of truth or falsehood there may have been in them, they were credited by Innocent III., who on 19th January 1216 sent letters to the Archbishop of Rheims, bidding him proclaim Bourchard d'Avesnes excommunicated 'until such time as he shall set Marguerite of Flanders at liberty, and humbly return to the manner of life becoming his ecclesiastical state. The testimony of several prelates and other trustworthy persons had convinced him that Bourchard was a sub-deacon and that he had been at one time a canon of Laon.' Of the circumstances of the marriage, which had been celebrated after the banns had been regularly published in the presence of all the great nobles of Hainault, Innocent was probably ignorant. Indeed, he seems to have been doubtful whether any marriage had taken place at all. 'Bourchard has not feared,' he says, 'to perfidiously conduct Marguerite, the sister of the Countess of Flanders, to one of the castles confided to his care, and there to retain her, averring that she is united to him in wedlock.' Great then was the surprise of the Papal legates when they presently approached the Château de Quesnoy, and Marguerite herself came forth to meet them with her beautiful face radiant with youth and happiness--she was only fifteen years old--nor did her words of greeting in any way lessen their amazement. 'Learn from mine own lips,' she said, 'that Bourchard is my lawful spouse, and know too that I have for husband a better man and a better knight than hath my sister Jeanne.'