ess of the garments: "It is a pleasure to see the embroideries
of gold and the coats of jewelled silk sparkle on all the public places,
in the streets, in the squares. Old age, the flower of life, petulant
youth, all stoop under the weight of the purple. The servitors and the
domestics abandon themselves to the joy of being covered with
adornments, and forget their condition of servitude on seeing the
splendid stuffs which they display on their persons. Those who had not
garments worthy of figuring in such a festival procured them by
borrowing."

On the occasion of another procession which took place during this
reign, and in which, as in so many other mediaeval demonstrations, the
devout participants walked barefoot, the religious zeal of these latter
was so great that they appeared, most of them, in their shirts, and very
many quite naked. This did not prevent the three queens, Isemberge,
widow of Philippe-Auguste; Blanche, wife of Louis VIII, and Berengere,
Queen of Jerusalem, from watching the procession with great interest.
This chronicler, Guillaume Guiart, records another instance of the
manners and customs of the period, in which Queen Blanche again appears.
It was the custom, at mass, when the officiating priest pronounced the
words: "The peace of the Lord be with you!" for each worshipper to turn
to his neighbor on the left and give him the kiss of peace. On one
occasion, the queen, having received this chaste salutation, bestowed it
in her turn upon a girl of the town who was kneeling next her, but whose
dress was that of a respectable married woman. Greatly offended, she
procured from her royal husband an edict that, in future, these
_coureuses d'aiguillettes_ should be forbidden to appear in robes
with trains, in falling collars and gilded girdles. Saint-Louis, Queen
Blanche's son, for all his sanctity, appears to have been the first king
of France to introduce a royal falconer into his court.

[Illustration: A LADY AT PLAY; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

From a water-color by F. Bac.]

Concerning this monarch, "in whose grand figure," says M. Henri Martin,
"is summed up all that there is of pure and elevated in the Catholicism
of the Middle Ages," we have, fortunately, abundant information in the
chronicles of the Sire de Joinville, his secretary and intimate friend,
who, with Villehardouin, is one of the first in date and in merit of
these national historians. The piety of the king--like that of most
other trul