Page:The Queens of England.djvu/64

50 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. On their return to Paris, Queen Eleanor remained in that capital, closely watched by her husband, whom she regarded with aversion. She now perceived faults in his character, while his sincere devotion and austerity of manners and appearance excited her contempt. She was even heard to exclaim that she had married a monk and not a king. At this unhappy period Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of An- jou and husband to the Empress Matilda, appeared at the court of Louis, to do homage for Normandy, bringing with him his son Henry, now but seventeen years of age. Geoffrey was reckoned one of the handsomest and most accomplished knights of the age, and Eleanor bestowed so much attention upon him as to excite much scandal. About a year and a half after this, her first acquaintance with the Counts of Anjou, father and son, Eleanor gave birth to a second daughter, called Alice ; and not long afterwards, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, being dead, the son, now grown to a handsome young man, the fame of whose learning and brav- ery had extended beyond Anjou, again presented himself at the French court to do homage for his dominions. It was an easy thing for Queen Eleanor to transfer her fickle fancy from the dead father to the living son, and scandal busied itself with a new love story. Whatever King Louis might think about a divorce, Eleanor was now determined to obtain one, and accordingly applied for it on the plea of her too near consanguinity with her husband. The king, well pleased, no doubt, to obtain a divorce on any terms, and caring nothing for Segur's argument about the ample dower, joined heartily in the application, and the divorce was accordingly granted, on the idle plea of consanguinity, in March, 1152, not quite four years after the setting forth of the ill-starred cru- sade. xfter sixteen years of wedlock, therefore, Eleanor removed from the capital and the court of Louis, in the full and firm possession of all those noble territories which, by her mar- riage, she had annexed to the crown of France* Wealthy as she was, the king in parting with her is said to have remarked that "her conduct had made her so infamous that the poorest gentleman in his kingdom would not desire to have her for his wife !" But whatever Louis knew of morals, he certainly knew little of human nature. Eleanor, now about thirty, still re- tained great beauty, and with all her wealthy inheritance as