Page:Of Six Mediaeval Women (1913).djvu/138

 encouraged by the king who sought to aggrandise the monarchy at the expense of the nobles, was growing rich, and politically gaining in power, and Philip ere long discovered that he had helped merely to change the centre of power, and not to crush it.

But Paris does not seem to have attracted Mahaut as did her castle at Hesdin. Here she was in the midst of her own domains, surrounded by her liegemen and retainers, and able to be in constant touch with her artificers and workers, whatever their art or industry. By the thirteenth century the dwelling of the Noble was no longer a grim castle, suggestive only of a place of defence, with narrow slits in the walls for the admission of air and light and for the discharge of arrows, but was more like a fortified country-house. The encompassing walls enclosed a wide area, within which was sheltered a village and everything necessary to the growth and development of a community.

From Hesdin Mahaut journeyed constantly through her County of Artois, visiting her castles, the towns or villages around them, and the various religious houses and hospitals she had founded, and attending in general to the well-being of her subjects. For her it was not enough that she was born to reign. She realised that, without administration, reigning through the accident of birth is mere puppet's work, and leads to naught. Her daily life was the visible expression of this belief, as she herself was an