ho was then a young and gay
nobleman of twenty-four, with a young wife and a beautiful castle in
Champagne, giving up everything, confessing his sins, making reparation,
performing pilgrimages, and then starting for the East, there to endure
for five years the most horrible hardships; when we read of his sailors
singing a _Veni, Creator Spiritus_, before they hoisted their sails; when
we see how every day, in the midst of pestilence and battle, the King and
his Senechal and his knights say their prayers and perform their religious
duties; how in every danger they commend themselves to God or to their
saints; how for every blessing, for every escape from danger, they return
thanks to Heaven,--we easily learn to understand how natural it was that
such men should see miracles in every blessing vouchsafed to them, whether
great or small, just as the Jews of old, in that sense the true people of
God, saw miracles, saw the finger of God in every plague that visited
their camp, and in every spring of water that saved them from destruction.
When the Egyptians were throwing the Greek fire into the camp of the
Crusaders, St. Louis raised himself in his bed at the report of every
discharge of those murderous missiles, and, stretching forth his hands
towards heaven, he said, crying, "Good Lord God, protect my people."
Joinville, after relating this, remarks, "And I believe truly that his
prayers served us well in our need." And was he not right in this belief,
as right as the Israelites were when they saw Moses lifting up his heavy
arms, and they prevailed against Amalek? Surely this belief was put to a
hard test when a fearful plague broke out in the camp, when nearly the
whole French army was massacred, when the King was taken prisoner, when
the Queen, in childbed, had to make her old chamberlain swear that he
would kill her at the first approach of the enemy, when the small remnant
of that mighty French army had to purchase its return to France by a heavy
ransom. Yet nothing could shake Joinville's faith in the ever-ready help
of our Lord, of the Virgin, and of the saints. "Be certain," he writes,
"that the Virgin helped us, and she would have helped us more if we had
not offended her, her and her Son, as I said before." Surely, with such
faith, credulity ceases to be credulity. Where there is credulity without
that living faith which sees the hand of God in everything, man's
indignation is rightly roused. That credulity leads to s