t. That kind
of fame might have been good enough for monks and abbots, but it would
never at that time have roused the ambition of a man of Joinville's stamp.
How the book came to be written he tells us himself in his dedication,
dated in the year 1309, and addressed to Louis le Hutin, then only King of
Navarre and Count of Champagne, but afterwards King of France. His mother,
Jeanne of Navarre, the daughter of Joinville's former liege lord, the last
of the Counts of Champagne, who was married to Philip le Bel, the grandson
of St. Louis, had asked him "to have a book made for her, containing the
sacred words and good actions of our King, St. Looys." She died before the
book was finished, and Joinville, therefore, sent it to her son. How it
was received by him we do not know; nor is there any reason to suppose
that there were more than a few copies made of a work which was intended
chiefly for members of the royal family of France and of his own family.
It is never quoted by historical writers of that time; and the first
historian who refers to it is said to be Pierre le Baud, who, toward the
end of the fifteenth century, wrote his "Histoire de Bretagne." It has
been proved that for a long time no mention of the dedication copy occurs
in the inventories of the private libraries of the Kings of France. At the
death of Louis le Hutin his library consisted of twenty-nine volumes, and
among them the History of St. Louis does not occur. There is, indeed, one
entry, "Quatre caiers de Saint Looys;" but this could not be meant for the
work of Joinville, which was in one volume. These four _cahiers_ or quires
of paper were more likely manuscript notes of St. Louis himself. His
confessor, Geoffroy de Beaulieu, relates that the King, before his last
illness, wrote down with his own hand some salutary counsels in French, of
which he, the confessor, procured a copy before the King's death, and
which he translated from French into Latin.

Again, the widow of Louis X. left at her death a collection of forty-one
volumes, and the widow of Charles le Bel a collection of twenty volumes;
but in neither of them is there any mention of Joinville's History.

It is not till we come to the reign of Charles V. (1364-80) that
Joinville's book occurs in the inventory of the royal library, drawn up in
1373 by the King's valet de chambre, Gilles Mallet. It is entered as "La
vie de Saint Loys, et les fais de son voyage d'outre mer;" and in the
margin