luxurious expenditure of her
husband in no small degree dissipated her resources, and naturally
prevented, for the time, any material encouragement of art. Doubtless
also much of her time was spent in superintending the education of her
children--two daughters who were destined to marry kings of France,
and a son who was born a peer of the realm, and inheritor of one of
its richest territories. But adverse fate, by the disgrace of one of
her daughters, and the death of her son, intervened to darken these
brilliant prospects, and forms a grey background to her otherwise
wonderful and glorious career.

The more the life of this remarkable woman is studied, the more
apparent it becomes that what gives it its peculiar charm and worth is
the sense she possessed of the value of all human endeavour, whether
in great things or in simple. To her the humblest matters of home
life, and the affairs connected with the administration of her
domains, had each their particular significance. The ordering of a
small grooved tablet on which her little boy could arrange the letters
of the alphabet claimed her attention equally with the founding and
arranging of a hospital. In her capacity as ruler we see the same wide
and reasonable outlook on life, for whilst strict as an administrator,
in personal relations she was charitable and sympathetic. Sometimes a
rebellious baron was deprived of his fief and banished, or was
condemned to expiate his misdeed by making a pilgrimage to sundry
shrines. But Mahaut was practical withal, and recognised human
frailty, and as the pilgrimage was for correction, no pardon was
granted unless the offender brought from each of the sanctuaries a
certificate that his vow had been fulfilled. On the other hand, if any
were sick or in trouble, she was solicitous for their relief, and even
aided them personally where possible. She thus put into practice the
charge of her saintly kinsman, King Louis the Ninth, who always
counselled those about him to have compassion on all mental or
physical suffering, since the heart may be stricken as well as the
body.

As Mahaut had no biographer, and contemporary history merely treats
her as if she were one of many pawns on a chess-board, her stewards'
entries furnish the only materials from which we can weave some
outline of her life, an outline, nevertheless, which enables us to
reason somewhat concerning her inner life, the pattern, as it were,
that is not wrought for the w