"The harshness of Queen Blanche towards Queen Marguerite," says Joinville, "was such that Queen Blanche would not suffer, so far as her power went, that her son should keep his wife's company.

Where it was most pleasing to the king and the queen to live was at Pontoise, because the king's chamber was above and the queen's below.

And they had so well arranged matters that they held their converse on a spiral staircase which led down from the one chamber to the other.

When the ushers saw the queen-mother coming into the chamber of the king her son, they knocked upon the door with their staves, and the king came running into his chamber, so that his mother might find him there; and so, in turn, did the ushers of Queen Marguerite's chamber when Queen Blanche came thither, so that she might find Queen Marguerite there.

One day the king was with the queen his wife, and she was in great peril of death, for that she had suffered from a child of which she had been delivered.