[43] It was the conduct of this campaign that won for Robert the title of Robert the Devil.
[44] The possession of an oven was a lucrative monopoly in mediæval times. The writer knows of a village in South Italy where this curious privilege is still possessed by the parish priest, who levies a small indemnity of a few loaves, made specially of larger size, for each use of the oven.
[45] He was said to be “kind even to Jews.”
[46] The indignant scribe is most precise: they walked abroad artatis clunibus et protensis natibus.
[47] The reformers always discover the nunneries to be so much more corrupt than the monasteries, but it is a little suspicious that in every case the former are expropriated to the latter. The abbot of St. Maur evidently had some qualms concerning the expropriation of St. Eloy, and wished to restore it to the bishop.
[48] The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution, and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.
[49] In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by the enemy’s footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to rescue him.
[50] Jeanne de Bourgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hôtel de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may believe Villon, this was the queen—
“Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine.”
Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if an ass were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with straw, below the tower to break his fall.