"Many a time," says he, "it happened in summer that the king
went and sat down in the wood of Vincennes after mass, and leaned against
an oak, and made us sit down round about him. And all those who had
business came to speak to him without restraint of usher or other folk.
And then he demanded of them with his own mouth, 'Is there here any who
hath a suit?' and they who had their suit rose up; and then he said,
'Keep silence, all of ye; and ye shall have despatch one after the
other.' And then he called my Lord Peter de Fontaines and my Lord
Geoffrey de Villette (two learned lawyers of the day and counsellors of
St. Louis), and said to one of them, 'Despatch me this suit.' And when
he saw aught to amend in the words of those who were speaking for
another, he himself amended it with his own mouth. I sometimes saw in
summer that, to despatch his people's business, he went into the Paris
garden, clad in camlet coat and linsey surcoat without sleeves, a mantle
of black taffety round his neck, hair right well combed and without coif,
and on his head a hat with white peacock's plumes. And he had carpets
laid for us to sit round about him. And all the people who had business
before him set themselves standing around him; and then he had their
business despatched in the manner I told you of before as to the wood of
Vincennes." (Joinville, chap. xii.)

The active benevolence of St. Louis was not confined to this paternal
care for the private interests of such subjects as approached his person;
he was equally attentive and zealous in the case of measures called for
by the social condition of the times and the general interests of the
kingdom. Amongst the twenty-six government ordinances, edicts, or
letters, contained under the date of his reign in the first volume of the
_Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France,_ seven, at the least, are
great acts of legislation and administration of a public kind; and these
acts are all of such a stamp as to show that their main object is not to
extend the power of the crown or subserve the special interests of the
kingship at strife with other social forces; they are real reforms, of
public and moral interest, directed against the violence, disturbances,
and abuses of the feudal system. Many other of St. Louis's legislative
and administrative acts have been published either in subsequent volumes
of the _Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois,_ or in similar collections, and
the learned