were followed occasionally by fervent repentance and expiation, at another by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety.  At the commencement of the eleventh century, William III., count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine, was one of the most honored and most potent princes of his time; all the sovereigns of Europe sent embassies to him as to their peer; he every year made, by way of devotion, a trip to Rome, and was received there with the same honors as the emperor.  He was fond of literature, and gave up to reading the early hours of the night; and scholars called him another Maecenas.  Unaffected by these worldly successes intermingled with so much toil and so many miscalculations, he refused the crown of Italy, when it was offered him at the death of the Emperor Henry II., and he finished, like Charles V. some centuries later, by going and seeking in a monastery isolation from the world and repose.  But, in the same domains and at the end of the same century, his grandson William VII. was the most vagabondish, dissolute, and violent of princes; and his morals were so scandalous that the bishop of Poitiers, after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself forced to excommunicate him.  The duke suddenly burst into the church, made his way through the congregation, sword in hand, and seized the prelate by the hair, saying, “Thou shalt give me absolution or die.”  The bishop demanded a moment for reflection, profited by it to pronounce the form of excommunication, and forthwith bowing his head before the duke, said, “And now strike!” “I love thee not well enough to send thee to paradise,” answered the duke; and he confined himself to depriving him of his see.  For fury the duke of Aquitaine sometimes substituted insolent mockery.  Another bishop, of Angouleme, who was quite bald, likewise exhorted him to mend his ways.  “I will mend,” quoth the duke, “when thou shalt comb back thy hair to thy pate.”  Another great lord of the same century, Foulques the Black, count of Anjou, at the close of an able and glorious lifetime, had resigned to his son Geoffrey Martel the administration of his countship.  The son, as haughty and harsh towards his father as towards his subjects, took up arms against him, and bade him lay aside the outward signs, which he still maintained, of power.  The old man in his wrath recovered the vigor and ability of his youth, and strove so energetically and successfully against his son that he reduced him to such subjection as to make him do several miles “crawling on the ground,” says the chronicle, with a saddle on his back, and to come and prostrate himself at his feet.  When Foulques had his son thus humbled before him, he spurned him with his foot, repeating over and over again nothing but “Thou’rt beaten, thou’rt beaten!” “Ay, beaten,” said Geoffrey, “but by thee only, because thou art my father; to any other I am invincible.”  The anger of the old man vanished at once:  he now thought only how he might console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave him back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects.  All was inconsistency and contrast with these robust, rough, hasty souls; they cared little for belying themselves when they had satisfied the passion of the moment.