The Story of Paris Part 4

[Footnote 46: A modern reproduction may be seen in the church of St.

Denis, but the exact shape is doubtful, no less than three different forms being known to antiquarians.]

The strenuous reign of Louis was marked by a great expansion of Paris, which became more than ever the ordinary dwelling-place of the king and the seat of his government. The market which from Roman times had been held at the bifurcation of the northern road near the fields (Champeaux), belonging to St. Denis of the Prison, was extended.

William of Champeaux founded the great abbey of St. Victor,[47] famed for its sanct.i.ty and learning, where Abelard taught and St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose hair shirt was long preserved there, and St. Bernard lodged. At the urgent prayer of his wife Adelaide, the king built a nunnery at Montmartre, and lavishly endowed it with lands, ovens, the house of Guerri, a Lombard money-changer, some shops and a slaughter-house in Paris, and a small _bourg_, still known as Bourg la Reine, about five miles south of the city. Certain rights of fishing at Paris, to which Louis VII. added five thousand herrings yearly from the port of Boulogne, were also granted. The churches of Ste.

Genevieve la Pet.i.te, founded to commemorate the miraculous staying of the plague of the burning sickness (_les ardents_); of St. Jacques de la Boucherie; and of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, so named from the heads of oxen carved on the portal, were also built.

[Footnote 47: The abbey was suppressed at the time of the Revolution and the site is now occupied by the Halle aux Vins.]

CHAPTER V

_Paris under Philip Augustus and St. Louis_

During 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 in the Cite. The king, "afeared of the number of his daughters and knowing how ardently his people desired a child of the n.o.bler s.e.x," was beside himself with joy when the desire of his heart was held up to him; curious eyes 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: "G.o.d 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-donne--Philip sent of Heaven--better known as Philip Augustus. Under him and Louis IX.

mediaeval 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. The English king held the mouths of all the great rivers and all the great cities, Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux. 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 va.s.sals in the memorable battle of Bouvines, and become one of the greatest of European monarchs. The king, who had owed his life to the excellence of his armour,[48] 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," say the chroniclers, "was war waged on King Philip, but he lived in peace."

[Footnote 48: In the ardour of the fight the king found himself surrounded by the enemy's footmen, was unhorsed, and while they were vainly seeking for a vulnerable spot in his armour some French knights had time to rescue him.]

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. One day as the king stood at the window of his palace, where he was wont to distract himself from the cares of state 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 summoned before him 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, seventeenth and eighteenth 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." Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century, called Paris "the beastliest town in the universe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed through the quadrangle of the Louvre, where a line on the paving marks its course, to the Porte St. Honore, near the Oratoire.

It continued northwards within the line of the present Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau and 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 at No. 55, and where part of a tower may be seen at No. 57. The line of the wall continued in the same direction by the Lycee Charlemagne, No. 101 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 Celestins. 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 just within the Rues des Fosses St.

Bernard and Cardinal Lemoine, to the Porte St. Victor, near No. 2 Rue des ecoles. The wall then turned westward above the Rue Clovis, where at No. 7 one of the largest and best-preserved remains may be seen. It enclosed the abbey of St. Genevieve, continued within the Rue des Fosses St. Jacques, and, between the Porte St. Jacques and the Porte St. Michel doubled outwards to enclose the Parloir aux Bourgeois near the south end of the Rue Victor Cousin. The south-western angle was turned near the end of the Rue Soufflot and the beginning of the Rue Monsieur le Prince. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, it then followed within the line of the latter street, and continued within the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie. In the Cour de Rouen, entered through the Pa.s.sage du Commerce, No. 61 Rue St. Andre des Arts, an important remnant may be seen with the base of a tower, and where the Rue Mazet cuts the last-named street stood the Porte du Buci. We may now trace the march of the wall and towers within the Rue Mazarine and across the Rue Guenegaud, where in a court behind No. 29 other fragments exist, to the south-west water-tower, the notorious Tour de Nesle[49]

whose site is occupied by the east wing of the Inst.i.tut. The west pa.s.sage of the Seine was blocked by chains, which were drawn at night from tower to tower and fixed on boats and piles just above the line of the present Pont des Arts. A similar chain blocked the east pa.s.sage of the river, drawn from the Tour Barbeau to La Tournelle, crossing the islands now known as the Isle St. Louis. 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_ on the north bank were drained and cultivated for market and fruit gardens.

[Footnote 49: Jeanne de Burgogne, queen of Philip le Long, lived at the Hotel de Nesle, and is said to have seduced scholars by night into the tower, had them tied in sacks and flung into the Seine. If we may believe Villon, this was the queen--

"Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jette en ung sac en Seine."

Legend adds that the schoolman, made famous by his thesis, that if an a.s.s were placed equidistant between two bundles of hay of equal attraction he would die of hunger before he could resolve to eat either, was saved by his disciples, who placed a barge, loaded with straw, below the tower to break his fall.]

The moated chateau of the Louvre, another of Philip's great buildings stood outside the wall, on the site of the old Frankish camp or _Lower_, and commanded the valley route to Paris. It was at once a fortress, a treasury, 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 ma.s.sive keep and the towers, are marked out on the pavement of the quadrangle.

The king erected also (1181-1183) two great warehouses at the old market at Champeaux: one for the drapers, the other for the weavers, that the merchants might sell their wares under cover and lock up their goods at night. They were known as _les Halles_, and the market ever since has borne that name. Here too Philip caused to be burnt at the stake the first heretics[50] executed at Paris, sparing the women and other simple folk who had been misled by the chief sectaries, of whom one, beyond the reach of earthly penalties and buried in the cemetery of les Innocents, was finally excommunicated, his bones exhumed and flung on a dungheap. "_Beni soit le Seigneur en toutes choses!_" says Pigord the chronicler who tells the story.

[Footnote 50: It should be remembered that heresy was the solvent antisocial force of the age and was regarded with the same feelings of abhorrence as anarchist doctrines and propaganda are regarded by modern statesmen.]

Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a provincial visitor, we were 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 surpa.s.ses 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 Pet.i.t 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 Pet.i.t 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 seat of kings at Paris one of the gentlest and n.o.blest 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 a.s.sume a fairer and an imperishable diadem among the saints in heaven.

All that was best in mediaevalism--its desire for peace and order and justice; its fervent piety, its pa.s.sion 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, St. 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 G.o.d, and cried out with tears in his eyes, that he had loved the queen, "his most dear lady and mother, beyond all mortal creatures."

[Footnote 51: She was wont to say to her son--"I would rather see thee die than commit a mortal sin."]

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 his biographer tells with charming simplicity how the king after hearing ma.s.s in the chapel at Vincennes outside Paris was wont to walk in the woods for refreshment and then, sitting at the foot of an old oak tree, whose position is still shown, 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 peac.o.c.k's plume, he would walk with his Council in the garden of his palace in the Cite, and on the poorer people crowding round him all speaking at once he would cry: "Silence!

one at a time," and call for a carpet to be spread on the ground, on which he would sit, surrounded with his councillors, and judge them diligently.

In 1238 St. Louis 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. He 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 mult.i.tudes 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 Pa.s.sion. 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, and on solemn festivals the king would himself expose the relics to the people. St. 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 p.r.o.nounce the word makes the tongue sore by reason of the r's in it."

[Footnote 52: By a subtle irony, part of the money was derived from the tribute of the Jews of Paris.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 G.o.d?' The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. 'Then,' said the knight, 'fool that thou art to have entered G.o.d's house and His church, and thou shalt rue 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."

St. 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 G.o.d 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." 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. Five thousand scribes were employed to copy the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers and cla.s.sic authors, 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, for a church without a library was said to be a fortress without ammunition.

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.

St. 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 Marche 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 Chateau de Vauvert, including extensive lands and vineyards. The chateau 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. St. 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 ill.u.s.trating the life of St. Bruno, by Lesueur, 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 Guillemites, or the Hermits of St. William, and at No. 14 Rue des Guillemites 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.

In 1217 the first of the Dominicans were seen at Paris. On the 12th of September seven preaching 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 opposite the church of St. etienne des Grez (St. Stephen of the Greeks), in the Rue St. Jacques, 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 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,[53] 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.[54] They too soon 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 s.p.a.cious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which still exists. St. Louis founded the hospital known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 + 20) for three hundred poor knights whose eyes had been put out by the Saracens. Subsequently it became a night shelter for a like number of blind beggars whither they might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. St. Louis at his death left them an annual _rente_ of thirty livres parisis that every inmate might have a good mess of pottage daily, and Philip le Bel ordered a fleur-de-lys to be embroidered on their dress that they might be known as the king's poor folk. The buildings, now transferred to the Rue de Charenton, originally covered a vast area of ground between the Palais Royal and the Louvre, and were sold in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators by Cardinal de Rohan of diamond-necklace[55] notoriety; an act of jobbery which brought his Eminence a handsome commission. The Quinze-Vingts 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 inst.i.tution. Luxury seems to have sometimes invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal degree 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.

[Footnote 53: On account of the cord they wore round their habit.]

[Footnote 54: St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the _Fioretti_ a beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim, visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in an embrace of fervent affection for a great s.p.a.ce of time in silence.

They parted without speaking a word, marvellously comforted.]

[Footnote 55: The innocence of Marie Antoinette in this scandalous affair has been clearly established. See _L'affaire du Collier_, by M.

Funck Brentano. Paris, 1903.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: REFECTORY OF THE CORDELIERS.]

The establishment of the abbeys of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the Holy Cross, and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Beguines, 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 quant.i.ty of the houses of G.o.d that he built."

St. 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." That, they objected, appertained to the ecclesiastical courts, but St. Louis was inflexible, and they remained unsatisfied.

Many were St. Louis' benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the Hotel 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. Viollet le Duc was of opinion that in many respects the Hotel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 _cottes_ of white fur and 300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they were moved from their beds to the _chambres aisees_. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of the Renaissance made reform urgent, and in 1505 the Parlement 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 Felibien, writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No limitations of age or s.e.x or station or religion or country were set. Everybody was received, and in Felibien's time the upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hotel Dieu was situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in 1878.

St. 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; 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 rest.i.tution. The Sire de Coucy, one of the most powerful of his barons, was summoned to Paris and in spite of his bravado, arrested, imprisoned in the Louvre and sentenced to death, for having hanged three young fellows for poaching. The sale of the provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, etienne Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as beneath him. Boileau was wont to sleep in his clothes on a camp bed in the Chatelet to be in readiness at any hour, and often St. Louis would be seen sitting beside the provost on the judgment seat, watching over the administration of justice. The judicial duel in civil cases was forbidden; the Royal Watch inst.i.tuted to police the streets of Paris; the charters of the hundred crafts of Paris were confirmed and many privileges granted to the great trade guilds.

In 1270 St. Louis 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. So feeble was the king when he left Paris, that Joinville carried him from the Hotel of the Count of Auxerre to the Cordeliers, where the old friends and fellow-warriors in the Holy Land parted for ever. When stricken with the plague the dying monarch was laid on a couch strewn with ashes. He called his son, the Count of Alencon to him, gave wise and touching counsel, and, after holy communion, recited the seven penitential psalms: having invoked "Monseigneurs St. James and St. Denis and Madame St. Genevieve," he crossed his hands on his heart, gazed towards heaven and rendered his soul to his Creator. _Piteuse chouse est et digne de pleurer le trepa.s.s.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sing away of this holy prince."

The bones of the dead king, from which the flesh[56] had been removed by boiling, were sent for burial to St. Denis, which he had chosen for the place of his sepulture. Joinville,[57] 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 G.o.d 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."