As for his children, Louis occupied himself in thought and deed with their education and their future, moral and social, showing as much affection and assiduity as could have been displayed by any father of a family, even the most devoted to this single task.  “After supper they followed him into his chamber, where he made them sit down around him; he instructed them in their duties, and then sent them away to bed.  He drew their particular attention to the good and evil deeds of princes.  He, moreover, went to see then in their own apartment when he had any leisure, informed himself as to the progress they were making, and, like another Tobias, gave them excellent instructions. . . .  On Holy Thursday his sons used to wash, just as he used, the feet of thirteen of the poor, give them a considerable sum as alms, and then wait upon them at table.  The king having been minded to carry the first of the poor souls to the Hotel-Dieu, at Compiegne, with the assistance of his son-in-law, King Theobald of Navarre, whom he loved as a son, his two eldest sons, Louis and Philip, carried the second thither.”  They were wont to behave towards him in the most respectful manner.  He would have all of them, even Theobald, yield him strict obedience in that which he enjoined upon them.  He desired anxiously that the three children born to him in the East, during his first crusade, John Tristan, Peter, and Blanche, and even Isabel, his eldest daughter, should enter upon the cloistered life, which he looked upon as the safest for their salvation.  He exhorted them thereto, especially his daughter Isabel, many and many a time, in letters equally tender and pious; but, as they testified no taste for it, he made no attempt to force their inclinations, and concerned himself only about having them well married, not forgetting to give them good appanages, and, for their life in the world, the most judicious counsels.  The instructions, written with his own hand in French, which he committed to his eldest son, Philip, as soon as he found himself so seriously ill before Tunis, are a model of virtue, wisdom, and tenderness on the part of a father, a king, and a Christian.

Pass we from the king’s family to the king’s household, and from the children to the servitors of St. Louis.  We have here no longer the powerful tie of blood, and of that feeling, at the same time personal and yet disinterested, which is experienced by parents on seeing themselves living over again in their children.  Far weaker motives, mere kindness and custom, unite masters to their servants, and stamp a moral character upon the relations between them; but with St. Louis, so great was his kindness, that it resembled affection, and caused affection to spring up in the hearts of those who were the objects of it.  At the same time that he required in his servitors an almost austere morality, he readily passed over in silence their little faults, and treated them, in such cases, not only with mildness, but with that