west, which they had burned and wasted into a vast solitude, became the
first Count of Anjou. But the tale of Tortulf and Ingelger is a mere
creation of some twelfth century jongleur. The earliest Count whom
history recognizes is Fulk the Red. Fulk attached himself to the Dukes of
France who were now drawing nearer to the throne, and between 909 and 929
he received from them in guerdon the county of Anjou. The story of his
son is a story of peace, breaking like a quiet idyll the war-storms of
his house. Alone of his race Fulk the Good waged no wars: his delight was
to sit in the choir of Tours and to be called "Canon." One Martinmas eve
Fulk was singing there in clerkly guise when the French king, Lewis
d'Outremer, entered the church. "He sings like a priest," laughed the
king as his nobles pointed mockingly to the figure of the Count-Canon.
But Fulk was ready with his reply. "Know, my lord," wrote the Count of
Anjou, "that a king unlearned is a crowned ass." Fulk was in fact no
priest, but a busy ruler, governing, enforcing peace, and carrying
justice to every corner of the wasted land. To him alone of his race men
gave the title of "the Good."

[Sidenote: Fulk the Black]

Hampered by revolt, himself in character little more than a bold, dashing
soldier, Fulk's son, Geoffry Greygown, sank almost into a vassal of his
powerful neighbours, the Counts of Blois and Champagne. But this
vassalage was roughly shaken off by his successor. Fulk Nerra, Fulk the
Black, is the greatest of the Angevins, the first in whom we can trace
that marked type of character which their house was to preserve through
two hundred years. He was without natural affection. In his youth he
burnt a wife at the stake, and legend told how he led her to her doom
decked out in his gayest attire. In his old age he waged his bitterest
war against his son, and exacted from him when vanquished a humiliation
which men reserved for the deadliest of their foes. "You are conquered,
you are conquered!" shouted the old man in fierce exultation, as Geoffry,
bridled and saddled like a beast of burden, crawled for pardon to his
father's feet. In Fulk first appeared that low type of superstition which
startled even superstitious ages in the early Plantagenets. Robber as he
was of Church lands, and contemptuous of ecclesiastical censures, the
fear of the end of the world drove Fulk to the Holy Sepulchre. Barefoot
and with the strokes of the scourge falling heavily on h