CHAPTER VPARIS OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

IN Philip Augustus (1180-1223) was reincarnated Charlemagne’s wide-seeing spirit, and now it appeared at a time when it was possible to turn vision into fact. Charlemagne saw the value of a united nation under a centralized power but conditions were not ripe for the fulfillment of his vision. Philip Augustus was alert in taking advantage of the beginning made by Louis VI toward establishing the supremacy of the king and in availing himself of certain feudal rights which previous monarchs had not been strong enough to enforce. He insisted that his vassals, great lords all of them, should submit themselves to his court; that they should take him as arbiter of their disputes; that they should ask his confirmation, as suzerain, of any privileges that they granted to their vassals; and that they should make no changes in their fiefs which should lessen their value to him. As suzerain the king was heir to fiefs which fell vacant for any reason, and he acted as guardian for the many minor children orphaned in the constant quarrels in which the nobles engaged.

A strong grasp of all these hitherto unurged rights gave Philip a power that enabled him to repress the disorders of the country, and sounded the note for the downfall of feudal home rule which could not live harmoniously with power centralized in the monarch.

Philip’s procedure divided his kingdom into bailiwicks, each containing several provostships. Four times a year eachbailliappeared before the assizes in Paris and reported on the condition of the land under his care. Thrice a year he came to town bringing the revenues of his bailiwick, and the king saw to it that the money was not turned over to any body of lords, always hungry for more without Oliver’s excuse, and accustomed to pocket any sums that strayed in their way. By the king’s decree the financial report was made to a board consisting of a clerk and of six burgesses. The burgesses were always Philip’s good friends. He made it for their interest to be faithful to him, and with their aid he played the barons against the church, the church against the barons, and both against the bands of robbers that infested the kingdom. He banished the Jews and confiscated their property, this for the same spiritual benefit which he thought would profit the country by his burning of heretics. Incidentally, the contents of the Hebrews’ coffers hidden in the ghetto on the Cité did not comeamiss for the filling of the king’s own strong boxes in the palace not far away.

In the palace Philip’s father and grandfather had died, there he himself was born, and there he married his second wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, to whom he took so violent a dislike that he separated from her the next day. The unlucky young woman appealed to the pope and the consequent embroilment of Philip with the church on account of his subsequent marriage with Agnes of Meran laid the whole kingdom under interdict. No services were held in the churches even for marriages or burials and the unhappiness caused the people was so great that at last Philip put away Agnes and recalled Ingeborg. Because he loved Agnes tenderly he hated Ingeborg all the more and her life of seeming favor was in reality one of wretchedness.

When Philip came to the throne all the western part of what is now France belonged to the king of England, Henry II. The Île de France was cut off from the sea, and the frequent hostile actions of a vassal whose possessions were greater than his own kept the young monarch constantly involved in petty wars with a man so much older than he and so much more skillful a tactician that he gained nothing and even came near losing a part of what he had. Into the mind of the lad of fifteen these troubles instilled a hatred of England and a determination to be free of this perpetual annoyance and to obtain a hold upon land that seemed unnaturally owned by a lord who was his vassal and yet lived over seas.

The years intervening between the growth of Philip’s determination and his chance to put it into effect were filled with work which developed the young king’s naturally strong character and intelligence. After Henry’s death one of his troublesome sons succeeded him—Richard, who has come down in history as “the Lion-hearted.” Richard was handsome and brave, a man to stir the imagination and admiration of a fighting age, but he was too impetuous and too active to apply himself to the study of government. When the call came for the Third Crusade Richard found in it an outlet for his energy for which he would not have to make excuse to his deserted kingdom. He and Philip and Frederick of Germany all went to the East, and there the French and English kings came to know each other, Philip envying Richard’s dash and audacity and envied in turn for the statesmanlike qualities which he was developing.

When it became evident that his presence would be of no help to a crusade doomed to failure Philip insisted on withdrawing to France where he knew that his coming would be of advantage; Richard stayed on with no thought forhis kingdom, hoping for further adventure. Philip put himself in touch with conditions in and around the Île de France, took advantage of all disturbances in his vassal’s provinces which would give him even a slender foothold, and was ready to meet any act of Richard’s successor, John, whatever it might be.

The opportunity came soon after John’s accession, for he could be depended upon to open some loophole through his disposition toward devious ways rather than straightforward. As lord of the western provinces of France he was Philip’s vassal; as Duke of Brittany his boy nephew, Arthur, was his vassal. When war broke out between France and England and John went across the Channel to pursue it, he found that his nephew, incited by Philip, without doubt, was laying claim to other provinces than Brittany. The easiest way out of the difficulty was to murder Arthur, which John is said to have done either with his own hand or by the dirks of ruffians in his presence. After Philip had stormed a fortress that had been looked upon as the chief defender of Rouen the frightened Englishman fled home, and then Philip devised a plan of making Arthur’s death work to his advantage. As John’s suzerain he summoned him to Paris to answer for his nephew’s death before the king’s court. John refused to appear unlesshe were promised a safe-conduct not only to the city but home again. Philip refused to promise protection for the return trip unless the court should declare John not guilty of the charge against him. Philip hardly could have expected that John would thrust his head into the noose, but it suited his purpose quite as well that he should not. What he wanted was his land and that he could take now with perfect justice when the court declared John guilty of murder and of treason in disobeying the orders of his overlord. The estates in France which John had inherited from his father, those in the north, were confiscated to the French crown. It was all much easier than fighting.

While diplomacy gained for Philip these northern possessions and the power that went with them, he gained a like addition in the south by a system of letting alone. Simon de Montfort, a noble of Normandy, entered upon a crusade against the people of Albi, in Toulouse, a town and district heretical enough to attract the attention of the persecutor and rich enough to draw the gaze of the avaricious soldier of fortune. The destruction that ensued laid waste a fair country and wiped out the greater part of its population. A few years later the province fell in to the crown in default of direct heirs to the ruling family of Toulouse, and thus the southof France was added to the northern and western possessions which were accumulating under Philip’s control.

Poor-spirited as was John, now called “Lackland,” he could not see himself deprived of his own land and his rival growing rich in other provinces without making some opposition. He entered into a coalition with the German emperor and with the Count of Flanders, who was one of Philip’s important vassals. Philip defeated the combined armies in the battle of Bouvines (1214) and thereby made himself the most powerful monarch in Europe. The success of the citizen soldiery established the reputation of the burgesses as strong and intelligent fighters and thereby struck terror to the hearts of nobles who were nursing plans of rebellion like those of the captured Count of Flanders. Yet nobles were one with burgesses in rejoicing over John’s final dismissal from any governing part in northern France and over the defeat of the intruding Germans. Never before in all her history had there been so universal a feeling of what it meant to be a Frenchman and to serve a country whose unity was symbolized by a king personally strong, strongly supported, in very truth the head controlling the members.

It is an interesting fact that the same period that established the supremacy of the king ofFrance was marked in England by the check to the royal domination administered to John Lackland when the barons wrested from him the Magna Charta. Historians of other countries are apt to speak of the French as volatile, capricious, delighting in revolutions, of which the troubled fourscore years from 1789 to 1871 are examples. It might be well to remember that the English, who pride themselves on being neither volatile nor capricious, were less patient than the men across the Channel. They, too, made their stand against aristocratic privilege, and they did it five hundred years before the long-suffering French; they, too, cut off their monarch’s head, and Charles went to the block a hundred and fifty years before Louis mounted the guillotine. Action and reaction are equal, prolonged repression must result in corresponding expression. The evils of five centuries are quickly cured if less than one century is devoted to the healing.

After the battle of Bouvines the victorious army marched to Paris in a triumph which was participated in by every village along the way. Every parish church held a service of thanksgiving, every crossroads was packed with shouting peasants doing homage to the king, admiring the nobles, and, above all, wonderstruck at the new military force whose possible value theycould see, even if it was not yet entirely clear how great would be the weight of the “mailed fist” of thebourgeois.

At the very time when the power of the king was becoming dominant, however, democracy showed itself even with impudence in thefabliaux, the popular tales which betrayed the jealous spirit of the populace toward the nobles and the clergy. These verses, marked by theesprit gauloiswere characteristic of the period of the early middle ages as were also thechansons de gestewhich stirred the crusaders by their recital of the valorous deeds of accredited heroes. “Renard the Fox,” a long epic of three centuries’ growth, burlesques every aspect of the social life of the middle ages, and its delicious fooling paints a more vivid and more intimate picture than does the pen of any chronicler. These lighter forms were not representative of all the thought of the period, for Abélard’s thesis, ancient and ever new, that we should not believe what we do not understand, and Saint Bernard’s refutation of such a lack of faith were the most prominent instances of a mental activity that found lodgment in schools and expression in pulpit controversy and rostrum argument. Now, too, the professions and the arts no longer were confined to the monasteries, but laymen became teachers and writers and artists and craftsmen.

The opportunities of meeting in Paris like-minded people from all over Europe for a long time had drawn students to Paris, and schools were endowed for men of different nationalities. Philip united them under the jurisdiction of the University. From very early days the region on the south bank, just across from the eastern end of the Cité and extending up Mont Sainte Geneviève has been given over to students. In the church of Saint Julien-le-Pauvre they met with their instructors. Across the alley on which the church faces still stands the house of the governor of the Petit Châtelet before whom the young men appeared to adjust their differences. Behind the church runs the rue du Fouarre on which many colleges were situated, among them the Schools of France, Normandy, Germany and Picardy. In 1202 this thoroughfare was called rue des Escoliers, but when, by way of responding to Pope Urban V’s appeal for self-denial, the students in the classes sat on bundles of straw bought in the near-by hay market, the street changed its name to “Straw Street,” to commemorate their good intentions. Near by, to-day, is a modern street called “Dante,” after the Italian poet, who was not behind his contemporaries in studying in Paris. Émile Loubet, the former president of the French Republic, lives at number 5 on this street.

Le Louvre au Tems de Philippe AugusteTHE LOUVRE IN THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS.From an old print owned by the City of Paris.

Le Louvre au Tems de Philippe Auguste

THE LOUVRE IN THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS.

From an old print owned by the City of Paris.

FRAGMENT OF THE WALL OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS AS IT LOOKS TO-DAY.

Not far away is the rue des Anglais, which was laid out before Philip Augustus’s reign and took its name from the English students who frequented it. A little farther west, creeping in the dark between tilted houses, is the street, called since the fourteenth century, “of the Parchment Workers,” and in the thirteenth century rue des Escrivains. Two of the tiny dwellings, numbers 6 and 7, belonged in the thirteenth century to the English cathedral of Norwich, which used them as dormitories for the scholars which it supported at the French seat of learning.

These houses are built around a microscopic courtyard, a plan persistent in France through many hundred years. It is a plan seen to-day in many modern dwellings, in the Banque de France, a seventeenth century building, in the eastern end of the Louvre and in its pavement record of the earliest quadrangular Louvre. It is a plan making for light and air and it often permits the planting of a small garden within. The idea sprang from the necessity of a fortification’s preserving a stolid and impenetrable exterior while the life of its tenants, carried on within the shelter of its walls, had something of pleasant environment.

So closely does Paris cling to her ancient traditions that even in the twentieth century theschools and their students are removed but a few yards from their medieval location. The students of to-day, too, have their own traditions of dress and behavior which mark them as inhabitants of the “Latin Quarter” even if they are kodaked at Versailles on a holiday afternoon. They assume for themselves now privileges which Philip Augustus encouraged them to take by making them free from the regulations which the other citizens obeyed and subject only to the ecclesiastical tribunal. This difference of attitude caused many riots in the thirteenth century and they break out afresh in the twentieth with a frequency which helps to occupy any idle moments of the city police.

So great were the attractions of Paris offered not only to students but to merchants that the population of the city grew to one hundred and twenty thousand under Philip’s rule. The populous section on the south or left bank of the river was matched by another on the north, chiefly inhabited by merchants and artisans, and both of them were larger than the original Cité on the island. The Cité was the administrative and ecclesiastical center, for the king’s palace was not his only residence but also a palace of justice, and crowded into the limits set by the Seine were so many churches that one of them served a parish of only twenty houses.

The northward growth of the city encroached upon the Halles as it had upon the cemetery of the Innocents, and Philip recognized the necessity of enclosing and roofing the markets. Such utilities as public ovens, too, which had been a monopoly of some of the religious houses, he opened to the citizens at large. He also instituted a water supply, which, though far from ample, since it allowed only two quarts a day for each inhabitant, was an earnest of good intentions.

The original tower of the Louvre seemed to Philip a good nucleus for an enlarged fortification which should be at the same time a palace to which he might withdraw from the palace in the crowded Cité. Around the old donjon he built a rectangular fortress, its short end lying along the river, its entrance defended by another huge tower whose work of protection was reinforced by smaller towers, by a surrounding wall, and by a moat. Down beneath the treasures of to-day’s Louvre and out under the courtyard still run passages of this old building. They twist and turn within walls of rough masonry and inflame the imagination with thoughts of adventurous possibilities, of plots and prisoners and escapes, until they land the wanderer of a sudden in the coal bin of the hopelessly up-to-date furnace that heats the Hall of the Caryatides.

Across the river on the south bank stood another huge tower, best known by its later name, the Tour de Nesle. It was from this tower, that, in the fourteenth century, Jeanne of Burgundy, widow of Philip the Long, is reputed to have had the people who displeased her dropped into the river. Villon’s “Ballad of Old-Time Ladies” says:

“And where, I pray you, is the Queen,Who willed that Buridan should steerSewed in a sack’s mouth, down the Seine?”

Buridan was a professor in the University, and the author of the famous assertion that if an ass were placed between two equally attractive bundles of hay he would starve to death before he could determine which one to eat first. The tale goes that Buridan’s friends, fearing the outcome of his visit to the tower, were waiting in a boat and rescued him. Dumas’ play, “La Tour de Nesle” is based on the legends surrounding this old fortification, now existent only in a tablet placed on the eastern wing of the Institute to mark its site.

A chain across the stream from the Louvre to the Tour de Nesle regulated navigation, for it could only be taken down for the passage of boats by permission of the provost.

Starting south from the Tour de Nesle ran

TOUR DE NESLE IN 1661.

the wall whose erection Philip commanded when he first went off to the wars, that his fair city might be well protected in his absence. It was higher and heavier than its predecessors, with a battlemented top to hide soldiers in action and frequent towers which served the triple purpose of sheltering extra men, of storing weapons and of affording points of observation somewhat above the wall itself. A dozen gates opened each upon a drawbridge whose lifting compelled the invader to cross a ditch in some way before he attempted to storm an entrance.

Leaving the Tour de Nesle the wall swept around Mont Sainte Geneviève and back to the river at a point about opposite the center of the present Île Saint Louis, east of the Cité. On the right bank it ran north and west, keeping below the Priory of Saint Martin which lay outside of it. Its course is traced on the pavement of the eastern courtyard of the present Louvre, part of one of the towers is extant in a government pawnshop in the Marais, a considerable section is to be seen in the enclosure beside Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, and its course is marked elsewhere by an occasional fragment, by some street namedFossé, or by a tablet placed by the Commission of Old Paris, which is doing excellent antiquarian work in the preservation and marking of historic buildings and localities.

The Paris of Philip Augustus was but a thirtieth part as large as the Paris of to-day, but it had three hundred streets. Narrow, dark and dirty alleys they were, the best of them, and even in this early century the devastating epidemics of a later day were not unknown. A contemporary historian says: “One day the king was in his castle of the Louvre and was walking back and forth, pondering the affairs of the kingdom, when there passed a heavy wagon whose wheels stirred up the street and caused an insupportable odor to rise from it. When he smelled this stench Philip experienced a profound nausea. At once he summoned the provost and the burgesses of the city and he gave them orders to pave the streets with large stones and strong, which was done.”

“Which was done in part” would have been nearer the truth, for, although one public-spirited citizen gave a large sum, most of the contributions were of the nature of samples from the shopkeepers’ stocks, and the actual amount of paving accomplished was very little for many centuries to come. As late as the sixteenth century Montaigne was deploring the evil odors of the city he loved so well, and Arthur Young, at the end of the eighteenth, compared the cleanliness of Paris most unfavorably with that of London. In Philip’s reign ladies seldom wentafoot, so thick was the mud, composed of indescribable filth, and knights had good need of armor in times of peace to protect them from buckets of water, poured casually into the streets from abutting houses with only a cry of “Gare l’eau” as a warning.

Nevertheless, in days of festival these same narrow streets might be gorgeous to behold. When Philip Augustus returned from the battle of Bouvines the whole city came out to meet him. Chanting priests, singing girls, shouting urchins ushered him into a town decorated to do him honor. From windows and balconies hung rich tapestries and carpets; banners waved, and the sunlight flashed on glittering spearpoints by day as bonfires made breastplates glitter at night.

It would be hard to find in all history so complete an instance of a nation’s spiritual and mental growth expressing itself in outer form rapidly and in transcendent beauty as is exhibited in the evolution of Gothic architecture in France in the twelfth century. It originated in the Île de France and within the span of this hundred years Paris was rebuilt, bursting into the elegance and grace of the new style from the heaviness of the old as a butterfly casts aside its constraining cocoon.

The nave of Saint Germain-des-Prés, is an example of the heavy-pillared, round-archedbuilding of the Romanesque era. The desire to give visible form to the universal feeling of uplift brought to birth the ogive or pointed arch which gave its name to “ogival” or Gothic architecture best shown, of course, in churches. Higher and higher the arches pointed skyward; lancet windows above helped to light the deep “vessel” or nave (from the Latinnavis, ship) and the roof crowned all at a dizzying height.

Satisfying as this was from the point of view of beauty and of symbolism, it gave rise to serious practical questions. How were such lofty walls to be made strong enough to support the outward push of the roof? The thirteenth century had come about before the problem was solved entirely. By that time outer buttresses had been evolved strong enough for their work yet so delicate that they were called “flying,” spread as they were like the wings of a bird.

Decoration became more beautiful, also. Romanesque pillar capitals had been adorned with conventional vegetation and strange beasts whose originals never were on land or sea. The sculptors of the ogival period took Nature as their teacher and France as their schoolroom and carved the leaves and flowers and fruits that grew about them, the oak and willow and rose-bush and clover and grape. Pinnacles gave an effect of lightness to exteriors and their edges were

CHOIR AND NAVE OF NOTRE DAME, LOOKING WEST.NAVE OF SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.

decorated withcrochets(furled leaves) and tipped withfleuronsor bunches of budding leaves.

High heavenward sprang spires from the western end of the churches, this western façade forming an imposing entrance to the nave through whose length the choir and altar at the eastern end, beyond the transepts, looked mysteriously far away. From the roof at the junction of the nave and the transepts a slender spire called aflèche(arrow) shot upward with exquisite grace.

The introduction of ogival architecture had a sudden and revolutionary effect upon the art of painting. Before the twelfth century mural decorations and the illumination of manuscripts had been the only instances in France. When the broad expanses of wall above the semicircular Romanesque arches vanished with the coming of the pointed arch there was no place left except the windows for the depiction of the lives of the saints, of scenes from Old Testament history and from the life of Christ. Glass then became the artist’s medium.

The most illustrious examples of the new style to be found in modern Paris are the cathedral of Notre Dame, the refectory of Saint Martin-des-Champs, and the Sainte Chapelle built by Saint Louis in the thirteenth century.

The cornerstone of Notre Dame was laid by Pope Alexander III in the reign of Louis VII (1163.) The new cathedral covered the spot where the Nautae had erected their altar to Jupiter, replaced the many times repaired Merovingian cathedral of Notre Dame, and attached itself to the ancient church of Saint Étienne, the original cathedral of Paris which stood where Notre Dame’s sacristy now rises. This old edifice was not taken down until the new was sufficiently advanced for the altar to be consecrated, so that service beneath the cathedral roof never was interrupted even for a day. The relics were removed to a new Saint Étienne’s, built on Mont Sainte Geneviève.

Construction went on briskly through Louis’ reign and the four decades of Philip Augustus’s and the three years of his successor’s, Louis VIII, and work ended on the superb edifice in the twentieth year of the rule of Saint Louis. It was a “quick job”—eighty-four years—as building went in those days. The great mass never has been completed, for the spires of the original plan have not been added. It has had its days of decay and of restoration, the last attempt having returned its elaborate west façade as closely as possible to its appearance in Philip Augustus’s day when it was finished.

Inside and out it is magnificently harmonious,

NAVE OF SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.

CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME.

a worthy setting for the scenes it has witnessed—scenes splendid, startling, tragic. Here Saint Louis brought the Crown of Thorns and here his funeral took place. Here Philip the Fair rode in on horseback after the battle of Mons-en-Puelle and here he convened the first States General—the first Assembly wherein the burgesses were represented. Henry VI of England was crowned here, so was Marie Stuart, and here it was that Napoleon set the imperial crown upon his own head and then crowned Josephine. Here Henry IV, turned Catholic for the purpose of gaining possession of Paris, heard his first mass, and here, during the Revolution, a ballet dancer posed in the choir as the Goddess of Reason, “in place of the former Holy Sacrament.”

Officially, the cathedral is the hub of France, for measurements along the national highways are all made from the foot of its towers. Deep in the hearts of the French people, too, is love for this splendid fane. They love it as a summary of Gothic beauty, as a storehouse of history, and, above all, as the moral fortress of the city, sheltering as it does “Notre Dame de Paris,” the guardian of the city for five hundred years.

THE son of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII, whose accession was celebrated in Paris with high festivity, reigned for three dismal, unprofitable years. His wife, Blanche of Castile, reared to a manhood of conscientious rectitude their son, Louis IX, whose virtues were recognized by canonization less than thirty years after his death.

It has happened, oddly enough, that although women are forbidden by the fourteenth century construction of the Salic Law to sit on the throne of France as sovereigns, no country has been more frequently ruled by women. Sometimes the queen-mother has acted as regent during the minority of her son, sometimes the queen has steered the ship of state while her husband was out of the country on war intent. Isabella of Hainault, Philip Augustus’s first wife, was regent when her lord went to the third crusade in 1189; Blanche of Castile governed her son’s kingdom for ten years (1226-1236); Anne de Beaujeu, daughter of Louis XI, guided the realm of her brother, Charles VIII, from 1483-1490; Louise de Savoie ruled (1515) until her son, Francis I came of age, and was again entrusted with the power when he went upon one of his many military expeditions; Catherine de Medicis, the mother of three kings—Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III—began her career as a ruler when her husband, Henry II, was warring with Germany (1552), continued it unofficially during the short reign of Francis II, was legal regent (1560) during the minority of Charles IX, and enjoyed a long continuance of influence because of his and his brother Henry III’s weakness of character which she herself had fostered; Marie de Medicis (1610) played havoc with Henry IV’s reorganized France during the long minority of her son, Louis XIII; Maria Theresa controlled the kingdom of Louis XIV while the “Sun King” was carrying war into Holland; Marie Louise was declared regent when Napoleon left France (1812-1814) to meet the allied forces of Austria, England, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden; and Eugénie took her husband’s place when Napoleon III fought against Austria (1859) and again (1870) when he left his country, never to return to it, during the ill-advised contest with Prussia.

Blanche of Castile was a person of extraordinary political intelligence, tact and administrative ability. The years of her son’s minority were made turbulent by unruly vassals who thought to take advantage of the inexperience of a woman, yet the queen-regent proved herself able to cope with every situation that arose. She endeared herself and the young king to the burgesses by appealing to them for support against the lords, and the lords realized the worth of the citizens’ friendship. On one occasion, when thebourgeoisof Paris set forth to meet and protect their young master who was surrounded by foes at some distance from the city, the nobles, hearing the news, gave up their iniquitous intentions and went to their homes. Indeed, it was their lack of coöperation among themselves that enabled Louis all through his reign to strengthen the royal power at the expense of that of his subjects.

In her treatment of these troublesome lords Blanche was not always obliged to use such stern measures as force of arms. Her armory was full of woman’s weapons, for she was handsome and gracious, and her manner and charm often brought about conclusions which she might not have reached by argument. In spite of the constant uprisings and conspiracies with which she had to contend the kingdom as a whole did not degenerate, and Philip Augustus’s strong foundation was not undermined. More and more power became centralized in the throne, Louispursuing from a single-hearted belief that such a concentration was best for his people, the policy which his grandfather undertook for ambition’s sake.

Had Louis followed his personal inclinations he would have entered the religious life. It has been suggested that Blanche encouraged this spirit in him, not because it would have been possible for him to have given up his throne, but because, if his interests were involved elsewhere he would not interfere with his mother’s rule of his kingdom. Blanche’s failing was jealousy. Jealous even of her own child, she continued to force her influence upon Louis after he was of age. Jealousy moved her to interfere between him and his wife, Margaret of Provence, so that they had to meet by stealth. She even took him from his wife’s bedside when she was thought to be dying. Naturally such an attitude did not endear her to her daughter-in-law, and Margaret, envious perhaps, in her turn became ambitious for power which she was not competent to wield. Who shall say that Louis had an easy life between an ambitious mother to whom his dignity did not permit him to give way, and a wife, finely courageous, but without talents of the larger sort! Only the fact that he loved both women tenderly could have given him the wisdom to steer his course straight.

The English king, Henry III, became involved in a quarrel between Louis and one of his vassals, and invaded France. Louis took theoriflammefrom Saint Denis and went against his foes, gaining victory after victory but using his gain with a moderation and kindness very different from the custom of the time. After the first hurt to his pride had worn away Henry was of a mind to be glad to accept Louis’ offer to give back to him such of his holdings in France as had been captured in the recent war, provided that Henry renounced others for all time, and admitted himself the vassal of France for those he still retained.

The ceremony of swearing the oath to Louis took place in the square (now the Place Dauphine) at the western end of the palace. Amid a great gathering of nobles and priests both French and English, Henry, dressed with no sign of his royal state, not even wearing sword, spurs, cape or head covering, knelt before Louis, laid his hands in his, and made oath, “Sir, I become your liegeman with mouth and hands, and I swear and promise you faith and loyalty, and to guard your right according to my power, and to do fair justice at your summons or the summons of your bailiff, to the best of my wit.”

Wise as he was in the rearing of his children, just to his people so that even the quarrelsomelords brought their troubles to his Paris court, generous to the poor and merciful to the afflicted, Louis was cruelly harsh to those whom he considered at fault on the score of religion. Heretics, so-called, he punished with severity; blasphemers he caused to be branded on the mouth, saying that he himself would consent to be branded with a hot iron if by that means all profane oaths might be removed from his realm. “I was full twenty-two years in his company,” says de Joinville, “and never heard him swear by God nor His Mother nor His Saints. When he wished to affirm anything he would say ‘Truly that was so,’ or ‘Truly, that is so.’”

On one occasion when he had commanded the branding of a Paris burgher the decree was harshly criticised by the people. When these same folk a little later were praising the king for some good works that he had done for the city he said that he expected more favor from God for the curses that his branding order had brought down upon his head than for the honor that he received for these good works.

Queen Blanche was given to benevolence and during her regency set her son an example which he willingly followed throughout his life. It was she who excited his interest in continuing the rebuilding of the Hôtel Dieu, the hospital which had stood in one guise or another for somehalf dozen centuries on the south side of the Cité between the cathedral and the river. A later annex was built on the left bank of the Seine adjoining Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, and this section was not demolished until 1908, although the buildings on the Cité were torn down and the present Hôtel Dieu on the north of the cathedral was built some forty years ago.

Louis’ philanthropic leanings included an establishment for the blind, three hundred (“Quinze-Vingts,” “Fifteen-Twenties”) being sheltered in a hospice which stood near the present Palais Royal, but is now established in the eastern part of the town. His interest in learning moved him to encourage his chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, in the enlargement of the school named after him, the Sorbonne, which Robert had undertaken at first for poor students, but which, under royal patronage, became a renowned theological school. It has always been independent in attitude, now opposed to the Reformation, now to the Jesuits, now to the Jansenists. To-day it is the University of Paris, the building on the Mont Sainte Geneviève being given over to the faculties of arts and sciences. Here come students from all over the world to listen to the foremost lecturers of France in a huge edifice which about a quarter of a century ago replaced one built by Richelieu. With thegenerosity which France has always shown in educational matters all the lectures are free.

The palace on the Cité remained under Louis the heart of the bustling city of 130,000 people. Here he came after his wedding, and the room that he occupied was used by many succeeding monarchs on the night after their first entry into Paris. The king’s library, built as a part of the palace, was filled with the work of several thousand copyists. Louis threw the building open to young students as well as to old scholars, and loved nothing better than to walk about among the young men and explain their tasks to them. In the palace garden the king used to sit and administer justice. De Joinville says:

“Sometimes have I seen him, in summer, go to do justice among his people in the garden of Paris, clothed in a tunic of camlet, a surcoat of tartan without sleeves, and a mantle of black taffeta about his neck, his hair well combed, no cap, and a hat of white peacock’s feathers upon his head. And he would cause a carpet to be laid down, so that we might sit round him, and all the people who had any cause to bring before him stood around. And then would he have their causes settled, as I have told you afore he was wont to do in the wood of Vincennes.”

Other parts of the palace were built by Saint Louis, notably the vaulted guard hall in the lower part of the north side. The ancient round towers belong to the Conciergerie where, during the Revolution, Marie Antoinette and many others as brave and as innocent went from imprisonment to death by the guillotine. Queen Blanche gave her name to an existing room in one of the towers.

In early days the towers must have been an impressive feature of the building. Their foundations are sunk below the surface of the river, and where the king’s hall opened on the street at the water level these massive constructions, now half buried by the quay, rose, tall and menacing on the island’s shore.

The Tour de l’Horloge, the square tower at the corner, replaces an early Merovingian tower on the same spot. The oldest public clock in France still tells the hour from its sculptured canopy, and its bell gave the left bank signal for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

Unable to leave his royal duties for the monastery, as he would have liked, Louis showed his leaning by the fostering of many religious houses. Paris was filled with brethren of the various orders, later to become a doubtful blessing, but now sincere, useful, typical of the trusting nature of the thirteenth century. Louis sat at their feet in spirit as he did literally before the great, lecturers of the University. To the Louvre he added a chapel.

It was to be expected that the Crusades wouldfind an ardent response in the king. He went twice to the East, the first time to suffer a long captivity, and the last time to lose his life.

It was through the crusades that Louis became the owner of the Crown of Thorns whose possession gave him the highest pleasure that his life knew. Because of it Paris was enriched by one of its most beautiful buildings. The Emperor Baldwin, it appears, had borrowed a large sum of money from some merchants of Venice, giving as security the sacred relic. When he failed to redeem his pledge the merchants sought to recoup themselves. Louis regarded as a direct gift from Heaven this opportunity to secure for himself and his kingdom a relic so holy. The price asked was about $270,000, an enormous sum for that time. The money was raised, however, a part of it by forced contributions from the Jews, who had begun to drift back to France because their usefulness made it expedient to disregard Philip Augustus’s edict of banishment. Messengers carefully selected for their probity and piety, brought the Crown from Italy into France. It was encased in a coffer of gold which was set into another of silver and that in turn into a box of wood.

The king, dressed as a penitent and barefooted, met the messengers at the town of Sens, about sixty miles from Paris. There he took the casketinto his own hands and walked with it all the way to the city. So eager were the crowds to see the procession that it could move but at the slowest pace. The multitude thickened as the city folk came out from the walls to join in reverencing the treasure. In order that every one might rest his eyes upon it Louis caused a lofty stand to be erected in an open spot and there the foremost of the clergy of France took turns in elevating the Crown for the crowds to see.

At Vincennes, east of Paris, the monks from the Abbey of Saint Denis joined the escort. When the advance was renewed Louis again bore the sacred casket which he carried to a spot of safety in the cathedral of Notre Dame which was at that time just about approaching completion.

From the cathedral Louis removed the relic to the chapel of Saint Nicholas, attached to the palace, so that it might be under his close supervision, and then, in an ecstasy of reverence he planned for its shelter a building which should be “in no wise like the houses of men,” the Sainte Chapelle. Only royal chapels received the title “Sainte.” This exquisitely beautiful structure is indeed royal, as it is truly a chapel, small and without transepts. The lower part contains the crypt with ogival vaulting which the builder, Pierre de Montereau, the architect of

THE SAINTE CHAPELLE, ERECTED BY LOUIS IX.INTERIOR OF THE SAINTE CHAPELLE.

the refectory of Saint Martin-des-Champs, learned, perhaps, from the Saracens. This part of the church was used for the religious services of the servants of the palace. It has been restored recently with the vivid red and blue and gold of its original decoration. Above is the main body of the chapel, with no entrance except that into the palace whence it was Louis’s habit to come twice or thrice during each night to prostrate himself before the altar. The chapel’s solid walls reach not far above a man’s head, and above them is a glittering mass of gorgeous glass, some of it the original. At the eastern end a gilded framework supports the platform to which the king ascended by a tiny staircase on the left side to show the sacred relic to the devout. Behind him the lower part of the western window was of plain glass that the people gathered in the courtyard might have the same privilege as those inside. The gold and jeweled covering of the relic was seized during the Revolution. The Crown, cased in glass, is now in the sacristy of Notre Dame.

The chapel’s glass tells the story of the coming of the relic to France and has portraits of the king and of Queen Blanche. In the outside carving as well as in the inside decoration Louis’s fleur-de-lis and his mother’s towers of Castile are repeated. The R of therexstands supported byangels. A wealth of loving ornament enriches the western façade.

At one side a tiny window cut slanting in the thickness of the wall is the only opening from the chapel into a private room built on to the outside by Louis XI who feared assassination if he should attend mass openly.

Theflèchenow rising from the roof dates from 1853 and is the fourth of its kind. The second was burned, and the third destroyed in the Revolution. It is wonderful that the whole building did not meet a similar fate, for it was used as a storehouse for flour and received no gentle treatment. To-day, although still a consecrated edifice, but one service is held in it during the year. That is called the “Red Mass” and to it go the judiciaries, clad in their scarlet robes, when the courts open in the autumn, to celebrate the “Mass of the Holy Ghost.”

Louis’ conscientiousness as a sovereign extended even to the business details of the city of Paris, now so grown that its traffic required four bridges to knit the island with the right and left banks. The king established the Parliament of Paris, not a parliament in the English sense of the word, but a court of justice. A body of watchmen policed the streets. The guilds and corporations had a carefully developed organization. Municipal administration was placed underthe care of the Provost of the Merchants and a body of councillors. The king was represented by the Provost of Paris. This office had so fallen into disrepute that it was with difficulty that Louis could secure any one to undertake the responsibility. How he reformed the office so that the holder became so eager to serve his fellow-citizens that he slept, all dressed, in the Châtelet, that he might be ready to do his duty at any hour, DeJoinville describes.

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