es these hundred and twenty-two poor having out-door relief,
thirteen others were every day introduced into the hotel, and there lived
as the king's officers; and three of them sat at table at the same time
with the king, in the same hall as he, and quite close." . . . "Many
a time," says Joinville, "I saw him cut their bread, and give them to
drink. He asked me one day if I washed the feet of the poor on Holy
Thursday. 'Sir,' said I, 'what a benefit! The feet of those knaves!
Not I.' 'Verily,' said he, 'that is ill said, for you ought not to hold
in disdain what God did for our instruction. I pray you, therefore, for
love of me accustom yourself to wash them.'" Sometimes, when the king
had leisure, he used to say, "Come and visit the poor in such and such a
place, and let us feast them to their hearts' content." Once when he
went to Chateauneuf-sur-Loire, a poor old woman, who was at the door of
her cottage, and held in her hand a loaf, said to him, "Good king, it is
of this bread, which comes of thine alms, that my husband, who lieth sick
yonder indoors, doth get sustenance." The king took the bread, saying,
"It is rather hard bread." And he went into the cottage to see with his
own eyes the sick man.

[Illustration: "It is rather hard Bread."----146]

When he was visiting the churches one Holy Friday, at Compiegne, as he
was going that day barefoot according to his custom, and distributing
alms to the poor whom he met, he perceived, on the yonder side of a miry
pond which filled a portion of the street, a leper, who, not daring to
come near, tried, nevertheless, to attract the king's attention. Louis
walked through the pond, went up to the leper, gave him some money, took
his hand and kissed it. "All present," says the chronicler, "crossed
themselves for admiration at seeing this holy temerity of the king, who
had no fear of putting his lips to a hand that none would have dared to
touch." In such deeds there was infinitely more than the goodness and
greatness of a kingly sold; there was in them that profound Christian
sympathy which is moved at the sight of any human creature suffering
severely in body or soul, and which, at such times, gives heed to no
fear, shrinks from no pains, recoils with no disgust, and has no other
thought but that of offering some fraternal comfort to the body or the
soul that is suffering.

He who thus felt and acted was no monk, no prince enwrapt in mere
devoutness and al