"Will you come with me to Holland?"
"You must ask my young lord there," and he pointed to Arnulf. "I am his
man now, by all laws of honor."
A flush of jealousy passed over Robert's face. He, haplessly for himself,
thought that he had a grievance.
The rights of primogeniture--_droits d'ainesse_--were not respected
in the family of the Baldwins as they should have been, had prudence and
common sense had their way.
No sacred or divine right is conferred by the fact of a man's being the
first-born son. If Scripture be Scripture, the "Lord's anointed" was
usually rather a younger son of talent and virtue; one born, not according
to the flesh, but according to the spirit, like David and Solomon. And so
it was in other realms besides Flanders during the middle age. The father
handed on the work--for ruling was hard work in those days--to the son
most able to do it. Therefore we can believe Lambert of Aschaffenbourg
when he says, that in Count Baldwin's family for many ages he who pleased
his father most took his father's name, and was hereditary prince of all
Flanders; while the other brothers led an inglorious life of vassalage to
him.
But we can conceive, likewise, that such a method would give rise to
intrigues, envyings, calumnies, murders, fratracidal civil wars, and all
the train of miseries which for some years after this history made
infamous the house of Baldwin, as they did many another noble house, till
they were stopped by the gradual adoption of the rational rule of
primogeniture.
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