ual domination of Europe appertained incontestably to
France."

The formation of the collection of manuscripts known as the _Tresor des
Chartes_ is due to Saint-Louis. These archives he gathered together and
placed in the Sainte-Chapelle,--founded to receive the true Crown of
Thorns which he had received from Baldwin II, Emperor of Constantinople.
He restored and protected the great hospital of the Hotel-Dieu; and when
his chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, in 1253, being at that time canon of
Paris, conceived the design of erecting a building devoted to the
instruction, by a certain number of secular ecclesiastics, doctors in
theology, of poor students, who, at that period, were frequently obliged
to live in the utmost poverty in order to pursue their studies, the king
purchased for the purpose a building situated in the Rue Coupe-Gueule
before the Palais des Thermes. The canonization of the monarch was
celebrated with great pomp in the spring of 1297, under Philippe IV; all
the nobles of the kingdom, clerical and laic, were invited to the
capital, the body was placed in a silver casket and carried in a
procession from Saint-Denis to Paris, where it was transferred to the
church of Saint-Denis. Some time afterward, one of the ribs was placed
in Notre-Dame and a part of the head in the Sainte-Chapelle.

It was under very different circumstances that these earthly remains
were first carried from Paris to Saint-Denis. The king had died in his
second Crusade, under the walls of Tunis; his son and successor,
Philippe III, re-entered Paris in 1271, bringing with him five
coffins,--that of his father, of his brother, of his brother-in-law, of
his wife, and of his son. He insisted upon carrying, unaided, upon his
shoulders, the body of his father from Paris to Saint-Denis, and at the
localities upon the road where he was obliged to stop and rest, crosses
of stone were erected, and remained for several centuries. Fortunately,
this was the last of the Crusades.

This filial piety did not save the young king from much tribulation.
Soon after his second marriage, with the princess Marie de Brabant
(during the rejoicings attending which the Parisians consumed an
inordinate quantity of wine, it is said, because the _cabaretiers_, in
revenge for the renewal of an old tax the year before, had put more
water than ever in their casks), his eldest son, the child of his first
wife, died. The king's chamberlain, the surgeon Pierre de Labrosse,