It is a probable conjecture, that the third race descended from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel.

It is an absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St.Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I.The Saxon origin of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion.

See a judicious memoir of M.de Foncemagne, (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.xx.

p.
548--579.) He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never appeared.] While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied.
But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of France, they descended from princes to barons; the next generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles.

The more adventurous embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of peasants.