y the Church, on
the ground of kinship. Robert offered resistance, but afterwards gave
way before the excommunication pronounced by Pope Gregory V., and then
espoused Constance daughter of William Taillefer, count of Toulouse; and
forth-with, says the chronicler Raoul Glaber, "were seen pouring into
France and Burgundy, because of this queen, the most vain and most
frivolous of all men, coming from Aquitaine and Auvergne. They were
outlandish and outrageous equally in their manners and their dress, in
their arms and the appointments of their horses; their hair came only
half way down their head; they shaved their beards like actors; they wore
boots and shoes that were not decent; and, lastly, neither fidelity nor
security was to be looked for in any of their ties. Alack! that nation
of Franks, which was wont to be the most virtuous, and even the people of
Burgundy, too, were eager to follow these criminal examples, and before
long they reflected only too faithfully the depravity and infamy of their
models." The evil amounted to something graver than a disturbance of
court-fashions. Robert had by Constance three sons, Hugh, Henry, and
Robert. First the eldest, and afterwards his two brothers, maddened by
the bad character and tyrannical exactions of their mother, left the
palace, and withdrew to Dreux and Burgundy, abandoning themselves, in the
royal domains and the neighborhood, to all kinds of depredations and
excesses. Reconciliation was not without great difficulty effected; and,
indeed, peace was never really restored in the royal family. Peace was
everywhere the wish and study of King Robert; but he succeeded better in
maintaining it with his neighbors than with his children. In 1006, he
was on the point of having a quarrel with Henry II., emperor of Germany,
who was more active and enterprising, but fortunately not less pious,
than himself. The two sovereigns resolved to have an interview at the
Meuse, the boundary of their dominions. "The question amongst their
respective followings was, which of the two should cross the river to
seek audience on the other bank, that is, in the other's dominions; this
would be a humiliation, it was said. The two learned princes remembered
this saying of Eclesiasticus: 'The greater thou art, the humbler be thou
in all things.' The emperor, therefore, rose up early in the morning,
and crossed, with some of his people, into the French king's territory.
They embraced with