Blois

Pretty long these stages, this is pretty flat and it should be an opportunity for the sprinters again.

Then we've got our first of two individual time drops from Blois to Chambord, 38 Ks.

not too hilly at all.

In fact, the elevation on this one is nominal, only 200 meters of climbing.

From Vins to Angers, 193km looks pretty set on to be just a sprint day.

Stage 9 is the first individual time trial from Blois to Chambord.

It's 38km and it's very flat, which is what I was referring to when I was saying that This feels like very much returning to the total of France, traditional 2010s.

And then stage 8 from Bourges to Le Clouseau, 224km, 3,100m of climbing, some hillier terrain, especially in the latter half.

This fortune consisted of but a few thousand francs.

Lambert returned to Blois at the beginning of 1820, driven from Paris by the sufferings to which the impecunious are exposed there.

He must often have been a victim to the secret storms, the terrible rage of mind by which artists are tossed, to judge from the only fact his uncle recollected, and the only letter he preserved of all those which Louis Lambert wrote to him at the time, perhaps because it was the last and the longest.

To begin with the story... louis one evening was at the thtre franais seated on a bench in the upper gallery near to one of the pillars which in those days divided off the third row of boxes On rising between the acts he saw a young woman who had just come into the box next him.

he gives a thirst for god he has freed the majesty of god from the trappings in which other human dogmas have disguised him he left him where

he is making his myriad creations and creatures gravitate towards him through successive transformations which promise a more immediate and more natural future than the catholic idea of eternity swedenborg has absolved god from the reproach attaching to him in the estimation of tender souls for the perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment a system of injustice and cruelty each man may know for himself what hope he has of life eternal and whether this world has any rational sense i mean to make the attempt and this attempt may save the world just as much as the cross at jerusalem or the sword at mecca these were both the offspring of the desert of the thirty-three years of christ's life we only know the history of nine his life of seclusion

prepared him for his life of glory and i too craved for the desert notwithstanding the difficulties of the task i have felt it my duty to depict lambert's boyhood the unknown life to which i owe the only happy hours the only pleasant memories of my early days excepting during these two years i had nothing but annoyances and weariness though some happiness was mine at a later time it was always incomplete i have been diffuse i know but in default of entering into the whole wide heart and brain of louis lambert two words which inadequately express the infinite aspects of his inner life it would be almost impossible to make the second part of his intellectual history intelligible a phase that was unknown to the world and to me but of which the mystical outcome was made evident to my eyes in the course of a few hours those who have not already dropped this volume will i hope understand the events i still have to tell forming as they do a sort of second existence lived by this creature may i not say this creation in whom everything was to be so extraordinary even his end When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to procure him some amusement, but the poor priest was regarded as a perfect leper in that godly-minded town.

No one would have anything to say to a revolutionary who had taken the oaths.

That was a very big deal that further legitimized William Adeline's future, at least there in Normandy.

Now, by 1116, he was back in Normandy as one of his new men, the son of the crusader leader, Count Stephen of Blois, named Theobald of Blois, was currently taking on King Louis himself, who was taking his frustrations with Henry out on the county of Blois.

Now, see, Louis was not very happy that one of his own counties, somewhat like a county not even within Normandy, was siding with Normandy.

So Louis was taking it out on Blois.

Apparently, Henry's reinforcements allowed Theobald to, as Henry of Huntingdon records, "...cause considerable damage to King Louis." What's more was that this decade just wouldn't quit when it came to giving everybody fits.

The Anglo-Saxon chronicles also say, "...this was a very vexatious and destructive year with respect to the fruits of the earth, through the immoderate rains that fell soon after the beginning of August, harassing and perplexing men till Candlemas Day." Now, 1116 was a mixed bag of news for England and France.

Matilda of Boulogne.

Well, in 1125, again, just nine years after Countess Mary's death, Count Eustace voluntarily abdicated his titles and became a cluniac monk, leaving his mighty county of Boulogne to his daughter and her husband.