(This is the Romance of the Rose, wherein is all the art of love.) And it is real love that he teaches; for the God of Love himself commands the lover: "It is my wish and my command that you centre all the devotion of your heart in one place." His lover is gentle and courteous; we are in an atmosphere not very different from that of the romances of chivalry.
When Jean de Meung undertakes, some fifty years later, to complete the romance left unfinished by Guillaume, we find that woman is for him the incarnation of all vices; that love is a wicked thing, the root of all evil; that the art of deceiving women, not of loving them, is worth learning. Nay, the utmost libertinage is sanctioned; there is no such thing as fidelity in love, for it is contrary to the law of nature, which designed toutes pour touz et touz pour toutes--all women for all men, and all men for all women. Jean de Meung has absorbed all that the most cynical libertines of antiquity could teach him, and to that he has added his own rancor against woman. It is Ovid's Art of Love and Remedy of Love revised for mediaeval use. Anything further from the gallantry of the romances of chivalry could hardly be found. And yet this cynical attitude was, as we have attempted to show, but an outgrowth of gallantry run mad; for in the beginning, gallantry, says Montesquieu, "is not love, but it is the delicate, the light, the perpetual pretence of loving."
VIII
MARIE DE BRABANT AND MAHAUT D'ARTOIS
THE household of the kings of France, so lately under the wise control of Blanche de Castille or the pure influence of the good but weak Marguerite de Provence, was the scene of a court scandal which threatened serious consequences under the son of Saint Louis, that Philippe misnamed "le Hardi." The central figure in this unpleasant episode, Marie de Brabant, is otherwise of so little note that we shall not tell more of her than is necessary to the understanding of the little intrigue of which she was accused.
Isabelle d'Aragon, the first wife of Philippe III., had died under tragic circumstances. She accompanied her husband and Saint Louis on the latter's second crusade, and returning with the body of the saintly king, was thrown from her horse while crossing a stream in Calabria, and died a few days later (January, 1271), giving birth to a child who did not long survive. In 1274, Philippe married Marie de Brabant, sister of Duke Jean de Brabant. The new queen was young, beautiful, and excellente en sagesse, increasing each day in favor with the king. The favorite of Philippe at that time was Pierre de la Brosse, who had begun life, so his enemies said, as barber-surgeon to Saint Louis, but who was really of more respectable origin. He had now arrived at such a pitch of fortune as to excite the envy of the nobles; since there was a clique against him, he was resolved to use every means to secure his power, for the loss of his power, as he well knew, would almost certainly involve the loss of his life.
The queen, Marie, had probably manifested dislike of this favorite and perhaps sympathy with the attempts to overthrow his power. An accident--we do not hesitate to affirm that it was an accident--gave Pierre, now her enemy, a chance to ruin her. In 1276, Prince Louis, Philippe's eldest son by Isabelle, died suddenly, or at least under mysterious circumstances. The days of poisoning were not by any means past, and poisoning was at once suggested to account for the mysterious death. Pierre de la Brosse industriously circulated the rumor that the queen had committed the crime and was prepared to do the like by the three remaining children of Isabelle, in order that the crown might descend to her children. There was, of course, much evil talk in the court, as well as plots and counterplots between the friends of the queen and the friends of the favorite. Philippe was half distracted between his love for Marie and his suspicions of her, and the latter Pierre de la Brosse took pains to keep alive. Finally things came to such a pass that resort was had to the supernatural to satisfy the doubts of the king,--no unusual method of settling difficulties in the days when the belief in things occult was still rife.
At the instance of one of the parties,--it is not absolutely certain which,--Philippe decided to refer the matter of the death of this son to the decision of a learned and devout nun, or Beguine, of Nivelle in Brabant, reputed to have the gift of second sight and mysterious knowledge of things past, present, and to be. It is not impossible that the oracle was tampered with by the enemies of Pierre de la Brosse; but, however that may be, she returned an answer that set Philippe's heart at rest. He was told to credit no ill against his good and loyal wife. Marie was thereby saved from a most dangerous position; but she could not fail to harbor resentment against the instigator of the attack upon her.
Though, in spite of the intrigues of the queen and the nobles led by her brother, for two years Pierre de la Brosse continued in favor, his fate was preparing; and in the spring of 1278 it overtook him, when letters written by him or forged by his enemies were put into the hands of the king. There was treason in these letters, alleged to have been taken from Pierre's correspondence with Spain. He was arrested and confined in Vincennes, and a court of nobles, dominated by the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant and the Count of Artois, held a sort of trial and condemned him. The nobles lost no time in disposing of the fallen favorite, whom they conducted at once to the scaffold, while the people of Paris, convinced of the fact that Pierre had been a good minister and that he was being unjustly condemned, indulged in serious riots. There was a popular belief, indeed, voiced by a Parisian chronicler, that Pierre was sacrificed to the hatred of the queen and the nobles: "Against the will of the King, as I believe, was he hanged.... He was destroyed more by envy than by guilt." The insinuations against the queen were no doubt one of the main causes of his downfall.