4), in his _Tesoro_, of the Italian with the French
feudal castle, in which he says of the one that it is only built for
war, with ditches, palisades, and high towers and walls, and of the
other that it lies in the midst of meadows and gardens, _with large
painted chambers_.

[28] _Chillon_, Albert Naef, Geneve, 1908.

Mahaut's cousin, the cold and impersonal Philip le Bel, was on the
throne. For the most part war had ceased in the land, but still there
was war in high places, for Philip, avaricious by nature, and finding
himself a king under altering conditions--the Papacy fallen into
disregard, the Nobility weakened, and the Nation growing, but without
any adequate provision made to meet the needs of this growth--left no
stone unturned to supply this want and gratify his greed. On the
question of the subsidies of the clergy and the relation between
things spiritual and temporal, he quarrelled with the Pope, Boniface
the Eighth, and brought about the removal of the Holy See from Rome to
Avignon. He robbed and ruined the Templars, and despoiled the Jews and
Lombards, the financiers of the day. With him no trickery was too
base, no cruelty too cold-blooded. Gold was his God. Dante, who was
his contemporary, refers (_Purg._ vii. 109) to "his wicked and foul
life" (_la vita sua viziata e lorda_), and (_Par._ xix. 118) to his
"debasement of the coinage" (_falseggiando la moneta_), as well as to
his self-seeking greed. Such, with the added glamour of art and
learning, was the courtly atmosphere of the Time. The bourgeoisie,
encouraged by the king who sought to aggrandise the monarchy at the
expense of the nobles, was growing rich, and politically gaining in
power, and Philip ere long discovered that he had helped merely to
change the centre of power, and not to crush it.

But Paris does not seem to have attracted Mahaut as did her castle at
Hesdin. Here she was in the midst of her own domains, surrounded by
her liegemen and retainers, and able to be in constant touch with her
artificers and workers, whatever their art or industry. By the
thirteenth century the dwelling of the Noble was no longer a grim
castle, suggestive only of a place of defence, with narrow slits in
the walls for the admission of air and light and for the discharge of
arrows, but was more like a fortified country-house. The encompassing
walls enclosed a wide area, within which was sheltered a village and
everything necessary to the growth and devel