Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/252

 216 Readings in European History How St. Louis thought people he could indeed, for he was sure the count of Artois was in paradise. " But O sire," said the marshal, " be of good comfort; for never did a king of France win greater honor than has fallen to you. You have swum a river in order to fight your enemies ; you have routed them and driven them from the battlefield, have captured their tents and engines of warfare, and to-night you shall sleep in their camp." And the king replied that God be praised for all that he had done for him ; but great tears fell from his eyes. The following anecdote shows the king's charming courtesy as well as his extreme conscientiousness. One day in Pentecost the saintly king was at Corbeil, where there were eighty chevaliers. After dinner the king came down into the courtyard beneath the chapel and was talking should dress. i n the gateway with the count of Brittany, the father of the present duke, God keep him ! Master Robert de Sorbonne * came seeking me and, taking me by the hem of my cloak, led me to the king; and all the other gentlemen followed us. So I said to Master Robert, " Master Robert, what do you want with me ? " and he said to me, " If the king should seat himself here in the courtyard and you should go and sit above him on the same bench, would you think yourself blameworthy? " And I replied that I should. And he said, " Then you are also blameworthy when you wear finer clothes than the king, for you array yourself in ermine and cloth of green, which the king never does." " But," I said, " Master Robert, saving your grace, I am not to blame in wearing ermine and cloth of green, for it is the habit of dress that has come down to me from my father and my mother. But you, on the contrary, are much to be blamed, for your father was a villein and your mother was a villein, and you have forsaken the dress of your father and your mother, and wear finer camelot than the king." And I took the skirt of his outer coat and that of the king's and 1 The founder of the college which grew into the famous divinity school at Paris.