father.
Similar remarks occur again and again; and though the Life of St. Louis
was certainly not written merely for didactic purposes, yet one cannot
help seeing that it was written with a practical object. In the
introduction Joinville says, "I send the book to you, that you and your
brother and others who hear it may take an example, and that they may
carry it out in their life, for which God will bless them." And again (p.
268), "These things shall I cause to be written, that those who hear them
may have faith in God in their persecutions and tribulations, and God will
help them, as He did me." Again (p. 380), "These things I have told you,
that you may guard against taking an oath without reason, for, as the wise
say, 'He who swears readily, forswears himself readily.' "

It seems, therefore, that when Joinville took to dictating his
recollections of St. Louis, he did so partly to redeem a promise given to
the Queen, who, he says, loved him much, and whom he could not refuse,
partly to place in the hands of the young princes a book full of
historical lessons which they might read, mark, and inwardly digest.

And well might he do so, and well might his book be read by all young
princes, and by all who are able to learn a lesson from the pages of
history; for few kings, if any, did ever wear their crowns so worthily as
Louis IX. of France; and few saints, if any, did deserve their halo better
than St. Louis. Here lies the deep and lasting interest of Joinville's
work. It allows us an insight into a life which we could hardly realize,
nay, which we should hardly believe in, unless we had the testimony of
that trusty witness, Joinville, the King's friend and comrade. The
legendary lives of St. Louis would have destroyed in the eyes of posterity
the real greatness and the real sanctity of the King's character. We
should never have known the man, but only his saintly caricature. After
reading Joinville, we must make up our mind that such a life as he there
describes was really lived, and was lived in those very palaces which we
are accustomed to consider as the sinks of wickedness and vice. From other
descriptions we might have imagined Louis IX. as a bigoted, priest-ridden,
credulous King. From Joinville we learn that, though unwavering in his
faith, and most strict in the observance of his religious duties, the King
was by no means narrow in his sympathies, or partial to the encroachments
of priestcraft. We find Joinvi