Volume 5 — CHAPTER I (continued 2)

In the year 1108, Philip, feeling his sins and his diseases lie heavy upon him, determined to take an allopathic dose of repentance to purify himself from the first before the second carried him off. He addressed special prayers to Saint Benedict, ordered that his wicked body should not be buried in the royal tombs at Saint-Denis, and clothed himself in the habit of a Benedictine monk. Thus he expired, having existed--not reigned--as king for forty-eight years, and was succeeded immediately by Louis the Fat, who was crowned within five days after the death of his father.

This haste was not altogether without excuse, for Bertrade was still alive, and not wasting her time in prayers to Saint Benedict. Taking advantage of the disturbed state of the kingdom, she managed to form a coalition, headed by her brother, Amauri de Montfort, and by the successor of her Angevin husband, to dethrone Louis and put in his place her own son, Philip, Count of Mantes. But Louis was too active to be caught as the conspirators had planned. He summoned Philip to appear before the court of peers of the duchy of France, and, on his refusal, seized upon the strongholds of his enemies before they were prepared, and deprived Philip of his county of Mantes.

Bertrade's last card was played, and she succumbed to her defeat. Though still in the height of her beauty, with not a wrinkle on her brow, she retired to the convent of Haute Bruyère, a dependency of the famous monastery of Fontevrault. Whether or not she was truly penitent for the evil life she had led we do not know. But there was to be short time left her for the cultivation of the monastic virtues; for the austerity of the new life soon wore her out, and she died in the convent.