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One of the few poetic legends that break the stern story of the Angevins is the tale of Count Fulc the Good, how, journeying along Loire-side towards Tours, he saw just as the towers of St. Martin's rose before him in the distance a leper full of sores, who put by his offer of alms and desired to be borne to the sacred city.
The suburb seems to have originated in the chapel of Roncevray, the Roman-like masonry of whose exterior may date back as far as Fulc Nerra in the tenth century. But its real importance dates from Henry Fitz-Empress. It is characteristic of the temper and policy of the first of our Plantagenet Kings that in Anjou, as in England, no religious house claimed him as its founder.
If it had been a nice, worldly-looking, well-kept chateau, with poplared walks and a formal garden, I should have welcomed it with open arms; but it wasn't, decidedly! It was the threatening age-blackened sort of place that inevitably suggests Fulc of Anjou, strongholds on the Loire, marauding barons, and the good old days with their concomitants of rapine and robbery and death.
To an historical student one glance at these faces as they lie here beneath the vault raised by their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of chronicles; but Fontevraud is far from being of interest to historians alone.
Nicholas on its height across the river; beyond the walls to the south is the site of the burial place of Fulc Rechin; one can tread the very palace halls to which Geoffry Plantagenet led home his English bride; the suburb of Roncevray, studded with buildings of an exquisite beauty, is almost the creation of Henry Fitz-Empress and his sons.
Martin's, the walls of Roncevray, the bridge over Mayenne, proclaim the restless activity of Fulc Nerra; Geoffry Martel rests beneath the ruins of St.
Amid the jibes of his courtiers the good count lifted him in his arms and carried him along bank and bridge. As they entered the town the leper vanished from their sight, and men told how Fulc had borne an angel unawares.
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