PARIS UNDER PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND ST. LOUIS
During the twenty-eight years of the reign of Louis VII. no heir to the
crown was born. At length, on the 22nd of August, 1165, Adelaide of
Champagne, his third wife, lay in child-bed and excited crowds thronged
the palace. The king, "afeared of the number of his daughters and
knowing how ardently his people desired a child of the nobler sex," was
beside himself with joy when the desire of his heart was held up to him.
The chamber was closed, but curious eyes had espied the longed-for heir
through an aperture of the door and in a moment the good news was spread
abroad. There was a sound of clarions and of bells and the city as by
enchantment shone with an aureole of light. An English student roused by
the uproar and the glare of what seemed like a great conflagration leapt
to the window and beheld two old women hurrying by with lighted tapers.
He asked the cause. They answered "God has given us this night a royal
heir, by whose hand your king shall suffer shame and ill-hap." This was
the birth of Philip le Dieu donné--Philip sent of Heaven--better known
as Philip Augustus. Under him and Louis IX. mediæval Paris, faithfully
reflecting the fortunes of the French Monarchy, attained its highest
development.
When Philip Augustus took up the sceptre at fifteen years of age, the
little realm of the Isle de France was throttled by a ring of great and
practically independent feudatories, and in extent was no larger than
half-a-dozen of the eighty-seven departments into which France is now
divided. In thirty years Philip had burst through to the sea, subdued
the Duke of Burgundy and the great counts, wrested the sovereignty of
Normandy, Brittany and Maine from the English Crown, won Poitou and
Aquitaine, crushed the emperor and his vassals in the memorable battle
of Bouvines, and become one of the greatest of European monarchs. The
English king was humiliated by the invasion of his territory by Prince
Louis, afterwards Louis VIII., who overran nearly the whole of the east
of England, captured Rochester and Winchester, and received the barons'
homage at London.
The victory of Bouvines evoked that ideal of moral and material and
national unity which the later kings of France were to realise. The
progress of Philip towards Paris was one long triumph. Peasants and
mechanics dropped their tools to gaze on the dread iron Count of
Flanders, captive and wounded. The king, who had owed his life to the
excellence of his armour,[49] was received in Paris with a frenzy of
joy. The whole city came forth to meet him, flowers were strewn in his
path, the streets were hung with tapestry, Te Deums sung in all the
churches, and for seven days and nights the popular enthusiasm expressed
itself in dance, in song and joyous revel. It was the first national
event in France. The Count of Flanders was imprisoned in the new
fortress of the Louvre, where he lay for thirteen years, with ample
leisure to meditate on the fate of rebellious feudatories. "Never after
was war waged on King Philip, but he lived in peace."
Two vast undertakings make the name of Philip Augustus memorable in
Paris--the beginning of the paving of the city and the building of its
girdle of walls and towers.
[Illustration: ST. ETIENNE DU MONT AND TOUR DE CLOVIS.]
One day as Philip stood at the window of his palace, where he was
wont to amuse himself by watching the Seine flow by, some carts rattled
along the muddy road beneath the window and stirred so foul and
overpowering an odour that the king almost fell sick. Next day the
provost and the sheriffs and chief citizens were sent for and ordered to
set about paving the city with stone. The work was not however completed
until the reign of Charles V., a century and a half later. It was done
well and lasted till the sixteenth century, when it was replaced by the
miserable cobbles, known as the pavement of the League. Whether the city
grew much sweeter is doubtful; certainly Paris in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries was as evil-smelling as ever. Montaigne, in the
second half of the sixteenth century, complains that the acrid smell of
the mud of Paris weakened the affection he bore to that fair city, and
Howell writes in 1620, "the city is always dirty, and by perpetual
motion the mud is beaten into a thick, black and unctuous oil that
sticks so that no art can wash it off, and besides the indelible stain
it leaves, gives so strong a scent that it may be smelt many miles off,
if the wind be in one's face as one comes from the fresh air of the
country."
[Illustration: WALL OF PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, COUR DE ROUEN.]
The great fortified wall of Philip Augustus began at the north-west
water-tower, which stood just above the present Pont des Arts, and
passed through the quadrangle of the Louvre where a line on the paving
marks its course to the Porte St. Honoré, near the Oratoire. It
continued northwards by the Rue du Jour to the Porte Montmartre, whose
site is marked by a tablet on No. 30 Rue Montmartre. Turning eastward by
the Painters' Gate (135 Rue St. Denis) and the Porte St. Martin, near
the Rue Grenier St. Lazare, the fortification described a curve in a
south-easterly direction by the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, where traces
of the wall have been found in the Cour de l'Horloge of the Mont de
Piété, and of a tower at No. 57. The line of the wall continued in the
same direction by the Lycée Charlemagne, No. 131 Rue St. Antoine, where
stood another gate, to the north-east water-tower, known as the Tour
Barbeau, which stood near No. 32 Quai des Célestins. The opposite or
southern division began at the south-east water-tower, La Tournelle, and
the Gate of St. Bernard on the present Quai de la Tournelle, and went
southward by the Rues des Fossés, St. Bernard and Cardinal Lemoine, to
the Porte St. Victor, near No. 2 Rue des Ecoles. The wall then turned
westward by the Rue Clovis, where at No. 7 one of the largest and
best-preserved remains may be seen. It enclosed the abbey of St.
Geneviève, and the Pantheon stands on the site of the Porte Papale. The
south-western angle was turned near the end of the Rue Soufflot and the
beginning of the Rue Monsieur le Prince. In a northerly direction it
then followed the line of the latter street, crossing the Boulevard St.
Germain, and continued by the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In the Cour de
Rouen, No. 61 Rue St. André des Arts, an important remnant may be seen
with the base of a tower. We may now trace the march of the wall and
towers by the Rues Mazarin and Guénégaud, where at No. 29 other
fragments exist, to the south-west water-tower, the notorious Tour de
Nesle[50] whose site is occupied by the Hôtel des Monnaies. The passage
of the Seine was blocked by chains, which were drawn at night from tower
to tower and fixed on boats and piles. The wall was twenty years
building and was completed in 1211. It was eight feet thick, pierced by
twenty-four gates and fortified by about five hundred towers. Much of
the land it enclosed was not built upon; the _marais_ (marshes) on the
north bank were drained and cultivated and became market and fruit
gardens.
The moated château of the Louvre, another of Philip's great buildings,
stood outside the wall and commanded the valley route to Paris. It was
at once a fortress, a palace and a prison. Parts of two wings of the
structure are incorporated in the present palace of the Louvre, and the
site of the remaining wings, the massive keep and the towers are marked
out on the pavement of the quadrangle.
Many are the stories of the great king's wisdom. One day, entering the
chapter-house of Notre Dame during the election of a bishop, Philip
seized a crozier and passing along the assembled canons thrust it into
the hands of one of lean and poor aspect, saying: "Here, take this, that
you may wax fat like your brethren." His jester once claimed to be of
his family through their common father Adam, and complained that the
heritage had been badly divided. "Well," said the king, "come to me
to-morrow and I will restore what is due to thee." Next day, in the
presence of his court, he handed the jester a farthing, saying: "Here is
thy just portion. When I shall have shared my wealth with each of thy
brothers, barely a farthing will remain to me."
One of the royal bailiffs coveted the land of a poor knight, who refused
to sell. The knight at length died, and the widow proving equally
stubborn, the bailiff went to the market-place, hired two porters whom
he dressed decently, and repaired with them by night to the cemetery
where the dead chevalier lay buried. His body was drawn from the tomb
and held upright while the bailiff abjured it to agree before the two
witnesses to a sale of the land. "Silence gives consent," said the
bailiff, and placed a coin in the corpse's hand. The tomb was closed and
the land seized on the morrow, despite the widow's protests. On the case
being brought before the judgment-seat of Philip in the palace of the
Cité, the two porters bore witness to the sale. The king, suspecting the
truth, led one of the witnesses aside and bade him recite a paternoster.
While the man was murmuring the prayer the king was heard of all the
court loudly saying: "Yes, that is so: you speak truly." The recital
over, the king assured him of pardon, and returning to the second
witness, admonished him also not to lie, for his friend had revealed all
as truly as if he had said a paternoster. The second witness confessed.
The bailiff, praying for mercy, fell prostrate before the king, who
condemned the guilty man to banishment for life, and ordered the whole
of his possessions to be escheated to the poor widow.
Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a provincial
visitor, we are able, fortunately, to give some account. "I am at
Paris," writes Guy of Bazoches, about the end of the twelfth century,
"in this royal city, where the abundance of nature's gifts not only
retains those that dwell there but invites and attracts those who are
afar off. Even as the moon surpasses the stars in brightness, so does
this city, the seat of royalty, exalt her proud head above all other
cities. She is placed in the bosom of a delicious valley, in the centre
of a crown of hills, which Ceres and Bacchus enrich with their gifts.
The Seine, that proud river which comes from the east, flows there
through wide banks and with its two arms surrounds an island which is
the head, the heart, and the marrow of the whole city. Two suburbs
extend to right and left, even the lesser of which would rouse the envy
of many another city. These suburbs communicate with the island by two
stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in the direction of the
English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks towards the Loire. The
former bridge, broad, rich, commercial, is the centre of a fervid
activity, and innumerable boats surround it laden with merchandise and
riches. The Petit Pont belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and
down disputing. In the island adjacent to the king's palace, which
dominates the whole town, the palace of philosophy is seen where study
reigns alone as sovereign, a citadel of light and immortality."
After Louis VIII.'s brief reign of three years, there rises to the
throne of France one of the gentlest and noblest of the sons of men, a
prince indeed, who, amid all the temptations of absolute power
maintained a spotless life, and at death laid down an earthly crown to
assume a fairer and an imperishable diadem among the saints in heaven.
All that was best in mediævalism--its desire for peace and order and
justice; its fervent piety, its passion to effect unity among Christ's
people and to wrest the Holy Land from the pollution of the infidel; its
enthusiasm for learning and for the things of the mind; its love of
beauty--all are personified in the life of St. Louis.
The young prince was eleven years of age when his father died. During
his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother,
Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency
were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he
attained his majority, Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was
ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death
reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees
before the altar, submissive to the will of God, and cried out with
tears in his eyes, that he had loved the queen, "his most dear lady and
mother, beyond all mortal creatures."
The king's conception of his office was summed up in two
words--_Gouverner bien_. "Fair son," said he one day to Prince Louis,
his heir, "I pray thee win the affection of thy people. Verily, I would
rather that a Scotchman came from Scotland and ruled the kingdom well
and loyally than that thou shouldst govern it ill." Joinville tells with
charming simplicity how the king after hearing mass in the chapel at
Vincennes was wont to walk in the woods for refreshment and then,
sitting at the foot of an old oak tree, would listen to the plaints of
his poorer people without let of usher or other official and administer
justice to them. At other times, clothed in a tunic of camlet, a surcoat
of wool (_tiretaine_) without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety, and a
hat with a peacock's plume, he would walk with his Council in the garden
of his palace in the Cité, and on the people crowding round him, would
call for a carpet to be spread on the ground, on which he would sit,
surrounded with his councillors, and judge the poor diligently.
So rigidly just was the good king that he would not lie even to the
Saracens. On his return from the crusade, being pressed by his Council
to leave a stranded ship, he called the mariners to him and asked them
if they would abandon the vessel if it were charged with merchandise.
All replied that they would risk their lives rather than forsake the
ship. "Then," said the king, "why am I asked to abandon it?" "Sire,"
they answered, "your royal person and your queen and children cannot be
valued in money nor weighed in the balance against our lives." "Well,"
said the king, "I have heard your counsel and that of my lords: now hear
mine. If I leave this ship there will remain on board five hundred men,
each of whom loves his life as dearly as I do mine, and who, perchance,
will never see their fatherland again. Therefore will I rather put my
person and my wife and children in God's hands than do hurt to so much
people."
[Illustration: VINCENNES.]
In 1238 the king was profoundly shocked by the news that the crown of
thorns was a forfeited pledge at Venice for an unpaid loan advanced by
some Venetian merchants to the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople. Louis
paid the debt,[52] redeemed the pledge, and secured the relic for Paris.
The king met his envoys at Sens, and barefooted, himself carried the
sacred treasure enclosed in three caskets, one of wood, one of silver
and one of gold, to Paris. The procession took eight days to reach the
city, and so great were the multitudes who thronged to see it, that a
large platform was raised in a field outside the walls, from which
several prelates exposed it in turn to the veneration of the people.
Thence it was taken to the cathedral of Notre Dame, the king dressed in
a simple tunic, and barefoot still carrying the relic. From the
cathedral it was transferred to the royal chapel of St. Nicholas within
the precincts of the palace. A year later the Emperor Baldwin was
constrained to part with other relics, including a piece of the true
cross, the blade of the lance and the sponge of the Passion. To enshrine
them and the crown of thorns the chapel of St. Nicholas was demolished
and the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle built in its place. The upper chapel
was dedicated to the relics; the lower to the Blessed Virgin. On solemn
festivals the king would himself expose the relics to the people. Louis
was zealous in his devotion and for a time attended matins in the new
chapel at midnight, until, suffering much headache in consequence, he
was persuaded to have the office celebrated in the early morning before
prime. His piety, however, was by no means austere: he had all the
French gaiety of heart, dearly loved a good story, and was excellent
company at table, where he loved to sit conversing with Robert de
Sorbon, his chaplain. "It is a bad thing," he said one day to Joinville,
"to take another man's goods, because _rendre_ (to restore) is so
difficult, that even to pronounce the word makes the tongue sore by
reason of the r's in it."
[Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.]
At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards Jews
and Infidels. "Let me tell you a story," said St. Louis. "The monks of
Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned clerks and
Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for love of Christ
was given bread and shelter at the monastery, approached the abbot and
begged leave to say the first word. The abbot, after some protest
against the irregularity, was persuaded to grant permission, and the
knight, leaning on his stick, requested that the greatest scholar and
rabbi among the Jews might be brought before him. 'Master,' said the
knight, 'do you believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus
and held Him at her breast, and that she is the Virgin Mother of God?'
The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. 'Then,' said the
knight, 'fool that thou art to have entered God's house and His church,
and thou shalt pay for it.' Thereupon he lifted his stick, smote the
rabbi under the ear and felled him to the ground. The terrified Jews
fled, carrying their master with them, and so," said St. Louis, "ended
the conference. And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute: the
business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to
defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the
miscreant's body as far as it will go."
Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although severe in
exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in converting them
and held many of their orphan children at the font. To others he gave
pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to himself and his
successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be
branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with
his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself
if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom.
Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard
him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever
angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say,
'Verily it is so, or verily it is not so.' Before going to bed he would
call his children around him and recite the fair deeds and sayings of
ancient princes and kings, praying that they would remember them for
good ensample; for unjust and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through
pride and avarice and rapine." The good king essayed to deal with some
social evils at court, but in vain:[53] he could only give the example
of a pure and chaste life. When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen
lord of Egypt who caused all the best books of philosophy to be
transcribed for the use of young men, and he determined to do the like
for the youth of Paris. Scribes were sent to copy the Scriptures and the
writings of the Fathers, preserved in various abbeys in France. He had a
convenient and safe place built at the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle,
where he housed the books. Scholars had free access to them, and he
himself was wont in his leisure time to shut himself up there for study,
reading rather the Holy Fathers than the writings of the best doctors of
his own time.
Louis was a steadfast friend to the religious orders. On his return from
the Holy Land he brought with him six monks from Mount Carmel and
established them on the north bank of the Seine, near the present Quai
des Celestins; they were subsequently transferred to the University
quarter, on a site now occupied by the Marché aux Carmes. The prior of
the Grande Chartreuse was also prayed to spare a few brothers to found a
house in Paris; four were sent, and the king endowed them with his
Château de Vauvert, including extensive lands and vineyards. The château
was reputed to be haunted by evil spirits, and the street leading
thither as late as the last century was known as the Rue d'Enfer. Louis
began a great church for them, and the eight cells, each with its three
rooms and garden, were increased to thirty before the end of his reign;
in later times the order became one of the richest in Paris and occupied
a vast expanse of land to the south of the Luxembourg. The fine series
of paintings illustrating the life of St. Bruno, by Le Sueur, now in the
Louvre, was executed for the smaller cloister of the monastery. The
Grands Augustins were established on the south bank of the Seine, near
the present Pont Neuf, and the Serfs de la Vierge, known later as the
Blancs Manteaux, from their white cloaks, in the Marais. They were
subsequently amalgamated with the Guillelmites, or the Hermits of St.
William, and at no. 14 of the street of that name some remains of their
monastery may yet be seen. The church of the Blancs Manteaux, rebuilt
in the seventeenth century, also exists in the street of that name.
[Illustration: REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS.]
In 1217 the first of the Preaching Friars were seen at Paris. On the
12th of September seven friars, among whom were Laurence the Englishman
and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a house near the
_parvis_ of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave them a home near St.
Genevieve, opposite the church of St. Etienne des Grez (St. Stephen of
the Greeks), and in the following year, when St. Dominic came to Paris,
the brothers had increased to thirty. The saint himself drew up the
plans of their monastery in the Rue St. Jacques, and always cherished a
particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was opened in
1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans were known as
Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a school; they
soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the religious
orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and princes. The
Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his deep affection
for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a house of his
order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin, sent in 1216
a few of his disciples. These early friars, true _poverelli di Dio_,
would accept no endowment of house or money, and supporting themselves
by their hands, carried their splendid devotion among the poor, the
outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the Cordeliers, as they were
called,[54] accepted the _loan_ of a house near the walls in the
south-western part of the city. St. Louis built them a church, and left
them at his death part of his library and a large sum of money.[55] They
too became rich and powerful and their church one of the largest and
most magnificent in Paris. St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at
their school of theology. Their monastery in the sixteenth century was
the finest and most spacious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars
and a vast refectory, which still exists. The king also founded the
hospital for 300 blind beggars, known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 × 20) now
in the Rue de Charenton, and left them an annual _rente_ of thirty
_livres parisis_, that every inmate might have a mess of good pottage at
his meals. Until Cardinal de Rohan, of diamond-necklace fame, effected
the sale of the buildings in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators, an act
of jobbery which brought his eminence a handsome commission, the
hospital was situated between the Palais Royal and the Louvre.
Originally it was a night shelter, whither the poor blind might repair
after their long quest in the streets of Paris. The king subsequently
gave them a dress on which Philip le Bel ordered a _fleur-de-lys_ to be
embroidered, that they might be known as the "king's poor folk." They
were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the
churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of
churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was
put up to auction every year, and those who promised to pay the highest
premium to the funds of the hospital were adjudicated the privilege of
begging there. This curious arrangement was in full vigour until the
latter half of the eighteenth century, when the foundation was removed.
Twelve blind brothers and twelve seeing brothers--husbands of blind
women who were lodged there on condition that they served as leaders
through the streets--had a share in the management of the institution.
Luxury seems to have sometimes invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal
decree forbade the sale of wine to the brethren and denounced the
blasphemy with which their conversation was often tainted. In 1631 they
were forbidden to use stuffs other than serge or cloth for their
garments, or to use velvet for ornament.
The establishment of the abbey of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the Holy
Cross and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Béguines, were also due to the
king's piety, and the whole city was surrounded with religious houses.
"Even as a scribe," says an old writer, "who hath written his book
illuminates it with gold and silver, so did the king illumine his
kingdom with the great quantity of the houses of God that he built."
Louis was, however, firm in his resistance to ecclesiastical
arbitrariness. The prelates complained to him on one occasion that
Christianity was going to the dogs, because no one feared their
excommunications, and prayed that he would order his sergeants to lend
the secular arm to enforce their authority. "Yes," answered the king,
"if you will give me the particulars of each case that I may judge if
your sentence be just." They objected that that appertained to the
ecclesiastical courts, but Louis was inflexible, and they remained
unsatisfied.
Many were the king's benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the
Hôtel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick poor
were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The sick, after
confession and communion, were to be put to bed and treated as if they
were the masters of the house. They were to be daily served with food
before the nursing friars and sisters, and all that they desired was to
be freely given if it could be obtained and were not prejudicial to
their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous the patient was to be set
apart and to be tended with especial solicitude. The sick were never to
be left unguarded and even to be kept seven days after they were healed,
lest they should suffer a relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat
twice a day: the sick whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a
patient was excommunicated. In later times, lax management and the
decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made reform urgent, and in 1505
the Parliament appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_ to
control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636, but
were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was united
to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Félibien, writing in
1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No
limitations of age or sex or station or religion or country were set.
Everybody was received, and in Félibien's time the upkeep amounted to
500,000 livres per annum. The old Hôtel Dieu was situated to the south
of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in
1878.
The king was ever solicitous for the earthly weal of his subjects and
made an unpopular peace with England against the advice of his Council.
"Sirs," he protested, "the land I give to the king of England I give
without being held to do so, that I may awaken love between his children
and mine who are cousins germain."
[Illustration: RUE DE VENISE.]
Louis sought diligently over all the land for the _grand sage homme_ who
would prove an honest and fearless judge, punishing the wicked without
regard to rank or riches;[56] and what he exacted of his officers he
practised himself. He punished his own brother, the Count of Artois, for
having forced a sale of land on an unwilling man, and ordered him to
make restitution. He inflicted a tremendous fine on the Sire de Coucy,
one of the most powerful of his barons, for having hanged three young
fellows for poaching. The whole of the baronage appealed against the
sentence, but the king was inexorable. As Joinville was on his way to
join ship at Marseilles for the crusade in Palestine, he passed a ruined
château:--it had been razed to the ground as a warning to tyrannous
seigneurs, who robbed and spoiled merchants and pilgrims. Louis forbade
the judicial duel in civil cases; he instituted the Royal Watch to
police the streets of Paris; he registered and confirmed the charters of
the hundred crafts of Paris and gave many privileges to the great trade
guilds.
In 1720 the king put on a second time the crusader's badge, "the dear
remembrance of his dying Lord," and met his death in the ill-fated
expedition to Tunis. Louis was so feeble when he left that Joinville
carried him from the Hôtel of the Count of Auxerre to the Franciscan
monastery (the Cordeliers), where the old friends and fellow-warriors in
the Holy Land parted for ever. When stricken with the plague the dying
king was laid on a couch strewn with ashes. He called his son, the Count
of Alençon, to him and gave wise and touching counsel, and, after holy
communion, he recited the seven penitential psalms, invoked
"Monseigneurs St. James and St. Denis and Madame St. Genevieve," crossed
his hands on his heart, gazed towards heaven and rendered his soul to
his Creator. _Piteuse chouse est et digne de pleurer le trépassement de
ce saint prince_, says Joinville, to whom the story was told by the
king's son--"A piteous thing it is and worthy of tears the passing away
of this holy prince."
The bones of the dead king, from which the flesh[57] had been removed by
boiling, were sent for burial to St. Denis, which he had chosen for the
place of his sepulture. The Sieur de Joinville,[58] his friend and
companion, from whose priceless memoirs we have chiefly drawn, ends his
story thus:--"I make known to all readers of this little book that the
things which I say I have seen and heard of the king are true and
steadfastly shall they believe them. And the other things of which I
testify but by hearsay, take them in a good sense if it please you,
praying God that by the prayers of Monseigneur St. Louis it may please
Him to give us those things that He knoweth to be necessary as well for
our bodies as for our souls. Amen."
King Louis was tall of stature, with a spare and graceful figure; his
face was of angelic sweetness, with eyes as of a dove, and crowned with
abundant fair hair. As he grew older he became somewhat bald and held
himself slightly bent. "Never," says Joinville, when describing a charge
led by the king, which turned the tide of battle, "saw I so fair an
armed man. He seemed to sit head and shoulders above all his knights.
His helmet of gold was most fair to see, and a sword of Allemain was in
his hand. Four times I saw him put his body in danger of death to save
hurt to his people."