rom the regal stem, the
sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal
ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors
of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce.
_3._ The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary
blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials,
Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the sister
of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople: he
rashly accepted the invitation of the barons of Romania; his two sons,
Robert and Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the Latin
empire in the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again
mingled her blood with the blood of France and of Valois. To support the
expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates
were mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended
on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.

[Footnote 74: The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay, are
preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the abbot and regent Suger,
(cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the age, (Duchesne, Scriptores
Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]

[Footnote 75: In the beginning of the xith century, after naming the
father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is obliged to add,
cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are assured that
the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong count of
Anjou, (A.D. 863--873,) a noble Frank of Neustria, Neustricus...
generosae stirpis, who was slain in the defence of his country against
the Normans, dum patriae fines tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture
or fable. It is a probable conjecture, that the third race descended
from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an
absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the marriage of
Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Blitilde,
a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of France is
an ancient but incredible opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de
Foncemagne, (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p.
548--579.) He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second
memoir, which has never appeared.]

While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures,
and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the
y