re-enforcements from France.  Louis embarked at St. Jean d’Acre, on the 24th of April, 1254, carrying away with him, on thirteen vessels, large and small, Queen Marguerite, his children, his personal retinue, and his own more immediate men-at-arms, and leaving the Christians of Syria, for their protection in his name, a hundred knights under the orders of Geoffrey de Sargines, that comrade of his in whose bravery and pious fealty he had the most entire confidence.  After two months and a half at sea, the king and his fleet arrived, on the 8th of July, 1254, off the port of Hyeres, which at that time belonged to the Empire, and not to France.  For two days Louis refused to land at this point; for his heart was set upon not putting his foot upon land again save on the soil of his own kingdom, at Aigues-Mortes, whence he had, six years before, set out.  At last he yielded to the entreaties of the queen and those who were about him, landed at Hyeres, passed slowly through France, and made his solemn entry into Paris on the 7th of September, 1254.  “The burgesses and all those who were in the city were there to meet him, clad and bedecked in all their best according to their condition.  If the other towns had received him with great joy, Paris evinced even more than any other.  For several days there were bonfires, dances, and other public rejoicings, which ended sooner than the people wished; for the king, who was pained to see the expense, the dances, and the vanities indulged in, went off to the wood of Vincennes to put a stop to them.

So soon as he had resumed the government of his kingdom, after six years’ absence and adventures, heroic, indeed, but all in vain for the cause of Christendom, those of his counsellors and servants who lived most closely with him and knew him best were struck at the same time with what he had remained and what he had become during this long and cruel trial.  “When the king had happily returned to France, how piously he bare himself towards God, how justly towards his subjects, how compassionately towards the afflicted, and how humbly in his own respect, and with what zeal he labored to make progress, according to his power, in every virtue, all this can be attested by persons who carefully watched his manner of life, and who knew the spotlessness of his conscience.  It is the opinion of the most clear-sighted and the wisest that, in proportion as gold is more precious than silver, so the manner of living and acting which the king brought back from his pilgrimage in the Holy Land was holy and new, and superior to his former behavior, albeit, even in his youth, he had ever been good and guileless, and worthy of high esteem.”  These are the words written about St. Louis by his confessor Geoffrey de Beaulieu, a chronicler, curt and simple even to dryness, but at the same time well informed.  An attempt will be made presently to give a fair idea of the character of St. Louis’s government during the last fifteen years of his reign,