ke
another Tobias, gave them excellent instructions. . . . On Holy
Thursday his sons used to wash, just as he used, the feet of thirteen of
the poor, give them a considerable sum as alms, and then wait upon them
at table. The king having been minded to carry the first of the poor
souls to the Hotel-Dieu, at Compiegne, with the assistance of his son-in-
law, King Theobald of Navarre, whom he loved as a son, his two eldest
sons, Louis and Philip, carried the second thither." They were wont to
behave towards him in the most respectful manner. He would have all of
them, even Theobald, yield him strict obedience in that which he enjoined
upon them. He desired anxiously that the three children born to him in
the East, during his first crusade, John Tristan, Peter, and Blanche, and
even Isabel, his eldest daughter, should enter upon the cloistered life,
which he looked upon as the safest for their salvation. He exhorted them
thereto, especially his daughter Isabel, many and many a time, in letters
equally tender and pious; but, as they testified no taste for it, he made
no attempt to force their inclinations, and concerned himself only about
having them well married, not forgetting to give them good appanages,
and, for their life in the world, the most judicious counsels. The
instructions, written with his own hand in French, which he committed to
his eldest son, Philip, as soon as he found himself so seriously ill
before Tunis, are a model of virtue, wisdom, and tenderness on the part
of a father, a king, and a Christian.

Pass we from the king's family to the king's household, and from the
children to the servitors of St. Louis. We have here no longer the
powerful tie of blood, and of that feeling, at the same time personal and
yet disinterested, which is experienced by parents on seeing themselves
living over again in their children. Far weaker motives, mere kindness
and custom, unite masters to their servants, and stamp a moral character
upon the relations between them; but with St. Louis, so great was his
kindness, that it resembled affection, and caused affection to spring up
in the hearts of those who were the objects of it. At the same time that
he required in his servitors an almost austere morality, he readily
passed over in silence their little faults, and treated them, in such
cases, not only with mildness, but with that consideration which, in the
humblest conditions, satisfies the self-respect of peop