my lord; and thereupon she swooned, and it was thought that she was
dead. The king, who thought she was dying, came back, and with great
pains she was brought round."

Louis gave to his wife consolation and to his mother support. Amongst
the noblest souls and in the happiest lives there are wounds which cannot
be healed and sorrows which must be borne in silence.

When Louis reached his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of
the kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public affairs.
There was no vain seeking after innovation on purpose to mark the
accession of a new master, and no reaction in the deeds and words of the
sovereign or in the choice and treatment of his advisers; the kingship of
the son was a continuance of the mother's government. Louis persisted in
struggling for the preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;
succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent Count of Brittany;
wrung from Theobald IV., Count of Champagne, the rights of suzerainty in
the countships of Chartres, Blois, and Sancerre, and the viscountship of
Chateaudun, and purchased the fertile countship of Macon from its
possessor. It was almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations
ably conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he accomplished
these increments of the kingly domain; and when he made war on any of the
great vassals, he engaged therein only on their provocation, to maintain
the rights or honor of his crown, and he used victory with as much
moderation as he had shown before entering upon the struggle. In 1241,
he was at Poitiers, where his brother Alphonso, the new Count of Poitou,
was to receive, in his presence, the homage of the neighboring lords
whose suzerain he was. A confidential letter arrived, addressed not to
Louis himself, but to Queen Blanche, whom many faithful subjects
continued to regard as the real regent of the kingdom, and who probably
continued also to have her own private agents. An inhabitant of
Rochelle, at any rate, wrote to inform the queen-mother that a great
plot was being hatched amongst certain powerful lords, of La Marche,
Saintonge, Angoumois, and perhaps others, to decline doing homage to the
new Count of Poitou, and thus to enter into rebellion against the king
himself. The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail.
Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and the most considerable amongst
the vassals of the Count of Poitiers, w