Geoffrey and Matilda, being in fact intensified by the elevation of the House to a throne.  Henry II. married Eleanora of Aquitaine, one of the greatest matches of those days, a marriage which has had great effect on modern history.  The Aquitanian House was as little distinguished for the practice of the moral virtues as were the lines of Anjou and Normandy.  One of the Countesses of Anjou was reported to be a demon, which probably meant only that her husband had caught a Tartar in marrying her; but the story was enough to satisfy the credulous people of those times, who, very naturally, considering their conduct, believed that the Devil was constant in his attention to their affairs.  It was to this lady that Richard Cocur de Lion referred, when he said, speaking of the family contentions, “Is it to be wondered at, that, coming from such a source, we live ill with one another?  What comes from the Devil must to the Devil return.”  With such an origin on his father’s side, crossing the fierce character of his mother, Henry II. thought he could not do better than marry Eleanora, whose origin was almost as bad as his own.  Her grandfather had been a “fast man” in his youth and middle life, and it was not until he had got nigh to seventy that he began to think that it was time to repent.  He had taken Eleanora’s grandmother from her husband, and a pious priest had said to them, “Nothing good will be born to you,” which prediction the event justified.  The old gentleman resigned his rich dominions, supposed to be the best in Europe, to his grand-daughter, and she married Louis VII., King of France, and accompanied him in the crusade that he was so foolish as to take part in.  She had women-warriors, who did their cause immense mischief; and unless she has been greatly scandalized, she made her husband fit for heaven in a manner approved neither by the law nor the gospel.  The Provencal ladies had no prejudices against Saracens.  After her return to Europe, she got herself divorced from Louis, and married Henry Plantagenet, who was much her junior, she having previously been the mistress of his father.  It was a mariage de convenance, and, as is sometimes the case with such marriages, it turned out very inconveniently for both parties to it.  It was not unfruitful, but all the fruit it produced was bad, and to the husband and father that fruit became the bitterest of bitter ashes.  No romancer would have dared to bring about such a scries of unions as led to the creation of Plantagenet royalty, and to so much misery as well as greatness.  There is no exaggeration in Michelet’s lively picture of the Plantagenets.  “In this family,” he says, “it was a succession of bloody wars and treacherous treaties.  Once, when King Henry had met his sons in a conference, their soldiers drew upon him.  This conduct was traditionary in the two Houses of Anjou and Normandy.  More than once had the children of William the Conqueror and Henry II. pointed their swords against their father’s