refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been offered him, and for
nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts of Palestine and Syria
since his departure from Damietta, from 1250 to 1254, he expended, in
small works of piety, sympathy, protection, and care for the future of
the Christian populations in Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary
resources, and the ardor of a soul which could not remain icily abandoned
to sorrowing over great desires unsatisfied.

An unexpected event occurred and brought about all at once a change in
his position and his plans. At the commencement of the year 1253, at
Sidon, the ramparts of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that
his mother, Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of November,
1252. "He made so great mourning thereat," says Joinville, "that for two
days no speech could be gotten of him. After that he sent a chamber-man
for to fetch me. When I carne before him, in his chamber where he was
alone, so soon as he got sight of me, he stretched forth his arms, and
said to me, 'O, seneschal, I have lost my mother!'" It was a great loss
both for the son and for the king. Imperious, exacting, jealous, and
often disagreeable in private life and in the bosom of her family,
Blanche was, nevertheless, according to all contemporary authority, even
the least favorable to her, "the most discreet woman of her time, with a
mind singularly quick and penetrating, and with a man's heart to leaven
her Woman's sex and ideas; personally magnanimous, of indomitable energy,
sovereign mistress in all the affairs of her age, guardian and
protectress of France, worthy of comparison with Semiramis, the most
eminent of her sex." From the time of Louis's departure on the crusade
as well as during his minority she had given him constant proofs of a
devotion as intelligent as it was impassioned, as useful as it was
masterful. All letters from France demanded the speedy return of the
king. The Christians of Syria were themselves of the same opinion; the