years nine successive popes had prosecuted the customary inquiries as to
his faith and life.)

It is said that the Christian enthusiasm of St. Louis had its source in
the strict education he received from Queen Blanche, his mother. That is
overstepping the limits of that education and of her influence. Queen
Blanche, though a firm believer and steadfastly pious, was a stranger to
enthusiasm, and too discreet and too politic to make it the dominating
principle of her son's life any more than of her own. The truth of the
matter is that, by her watchfulness and her exactitude in morals, she
helped to impress upon her son the great Christian lesson of hatred for
sin and habitual concern for the eternal salvation of his soul. "Madame
used to say of me," Louis was constantly repeating, "that if I were sick
unto death, and could not be cured save by acting in such wise that I
should sin mortally, she would let me die rather than that I should anger
my Creator to my damnation."

[Illustration: ST. LOUIS ADMINISTERING JUSTICE----46]


In the first years of his government, when he had reached his majority,
there was nothing to show that the idea of the crusade occupied Louis
IX.'s mind; and it was only in 1239, when he was now four and twenty,
that it showed itself vividly in him. Some of his principal vassals, the
Counts of Champagne, Brittany, and Macon, had raised an army of
crusaders, and were getting ready to start for Palestine; and the king
was not contented with giving them encouragement, but "he desired that
Amaury de Montfort, his constable, should, in his name, serve Jesus
Christ in this war; and for that reason he gave him arms and assigned to
him per day a sum of money, for which Amaury thanked him on his knees,