On the very day after he landed from his ship the King fell sick.  His physician being disabled by the same malady, I was called in to the King’s help; and from the first I saw that, save by a miracle, he could not live.  On the fourth day he died, making as good and devout an end as any that I have ever seen.  He would know the truth, for he was not one of those who buoy themselves up with false hopes.  And when he knew it, then first with the help of the priests that attended him he prepared his soul, and afterward he gave what time remained to teaching the son who should be King after him how he should best do his duty to God and man.

I heard much from him who had put it in my mind to come from the island of Sardinia concerning King Louis.  Never, he told me, was a King more bent on doing justice and judgment.  These he maintained with his whole heart and strength, not having any respect of persons, or having regard to his own profit.  Though he held bishops and priests in great reverence, being most careful of all the offices of religion, yet he would withstand even these when they seemed to seek that which was not fair and just.  He was a lover of peace far beyond the wont of Kings, who indeed, for the most part, care but little for it, so that men say in a proverb, “War is the game of Kings.”  Of the poor he was a great and constant favourer.  Every day he had a multitude of them fed at his cost in his palace, and sometimes he would serve himself, and it was his custom on a certain day to wash the feet of poor men.  In his eating and drinking he was as temperate as man could be, drinking, for example, but one cup of wine, and that largely mingled with water.  In all things wherein great men ofttimes offend he was wholly blameless and beyond reproach.  Of all men that I had any knowledge of, whether by sight or by hearing, in this business of the Crusades there was not one who could be so much as named in comparison with King Louis.  To King Louis religion was as life itself.  It filled, as it were, his whole soul; he judged of all things by it; he hungered and thirsted after it.  And yet of all who bore the cross this man, being, as he was, so much the most faithful to his vow, by far the truest cross-bearer of all, yet failed the most utterly.  Of such things I have not the wit to judge; yet this, methinks, is manifest, that the Kingdom of God is not set forward by the power of armies.  I do believe that if King Louis, being what he was, a man after God’s own heart, had come, not with the sword, but preaching the truth by his life, he had done more for the cause that he had at heart.  As it was, he furthered it not at all, so far as I can discern, but rather set it back.  That he did not gain for Christendom so much as a single foot of earth is not so much to be lamented, as that he made wider the breach between Christian men and the followers of Mahomet.  And this he did, though he was in very truth the most Christlike of all the men that I have ever seen.