r centuries in the same Church of St. Laurent where
Joinville reposed, and where he had founded a chapel dedicated to his
companion in arms, Louis IX., the Royal Saint of France; and when, at the
time of the French Revolution, the tombs of St. Denis were broken open by
an infuriated people, and their ashes scattered abroad, the vaults of the
church at Joinville, too, shared the same fate, and the remains of the
brave Crusader suffered the same indignity as the remains of his sainted
King. It is true that there were some sparks of loyalty and self-respect
left in the hearts of the citizens of Joinville. They had the bones of the
old warrior and of the Dukes of Lorraine reinterred in the public
cemetery; and there they now rest, mingled with the dust of their faithful
lieges and subjects. But the Church of St. Laurent, with its tombs and
tombstones, is gone. The property of the Joinvilles descended from the
Dukes of Lorraine to the Dukes of Guise, and, lastly, to the family of
Orleans. The famous Duke of Orleans, Egalite, sold Joinville in 1790, and
stipulated that the old castle should be demolished. Poplars and fir-trees
now cover the ground of the ancient castle, and the name of Joinville is
borne by a royal prince, the son of a dethroned king, the grandson of
Louis Egalite, who died on the guillotine.

Neither his noble birth, nor his noble deeds, nor the friendship of kings
and princes, would have saved Joinville from that inevitable oblivion
which has blotted from the memory of living men the names of his more
eminent companions,--Robert, Count of Artois; Alphonse, Count of Poitiers;
Charles, Count of Anjou; Hugue, Duke of Burgundy; William, Count of
Flanders, and many more. A little book which the old warrior wrote or
dictated,--for it is very doubtful whether he could have written it
himself,--a book which for many years attracted nobody's attention, and
which even now we do not possess in the original language of the
thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth centuries--has secured to the
name of Jean de Joinville a living immortality, and a fame that will last
long after the bronze statue which was erected in his native place in 1853
shall have shared the fate of his castle, of his church, and of his tomb.
Nothing could have been further from the mind of the old nobleman when, at
the age of eighty-five, he began the history of his royal comrade, St.
Louis, than the hope of literary fame. He would have scouted i