Note 50 — Chapter V · PARIS UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS
Reading edition
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.