Ch. 11 - The Three Queens - Page 2

momentary impressions. While the sense of
Christianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, on
the other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime .... One
might doubtless prove by a series of examples that the maternal
influence when it predominated in the education of a son gave him a
marked superiority over his contemporaries. Richard Coeur-de-Lion
the crowned poet, artist, the king whose noble manners and refined
mind in spite of his cruelty exercised so strong an impression on
his age, was formed by that brilliant Eleanor of Guienne who, in her
struggle with her husband, retained her sons as much as possible
within her sphere of influence in order to make party chiefs of
them. Our great Saint Louis, as all know, was brought up exclusively
by Blanche of Castile; and Joinville, the charming writer so worthy
of Saint Louis's friendship, and apparently so superior to his
surroundings, was also the pupil of a widowed and regent mother.

The superiority of the woman was not a fancy, but a fact. Man's
business was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man was
also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home
for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The
woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy;
supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy
was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her
most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part,
counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman
was robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly
resent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her,
dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he
was quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. As
a matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point,
history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popular
fabliaux--invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class--
are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustrating
it. The greatest men illustrate it best, as one might show almost at
hazard. The greatest men of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries were William the Norman; his great grandson Henry II
Plantagenet; Saint Louis of France; and, if a fourth be needed,
Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Notoriously all these men had as much
difficulty as Louis XIV himself with the women of their family.
Tradition exaggerates everything it touches, but shows, at the same
time, what is passing in the minds of the society which tradites. In
Normandy, the people of Caen have kept a tradition, told elsewhere
in other forms, that one day, Duke William,--the Conqueror,--