Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/571

CHAP XXII "that if he the king did not hold to his agreements, might he be as shamed as the Christian who denied God and His Mother, and was cut off from the company of the twelve Companions (apostles) and of all the saints, male and female. To this the king consented. The last point of the oath was this: That if the king did not keep his agreements, might he be as shamed as the Christian who denied God and His law, and in contempt of God spat on the Cross and trod on it. When the king heard that, he said, please God, he would not make that oath."

Then the trouble began, and the Emirs tortured the venerable patriarch of Jerusalem till he besought the king to swear. How the oath was arranged I do not know, says Joinville, but finally the Emirs professed themselves satisfied. And after that, when the ransom was paid, the Saracens by a mistake accepted a sum ten thousand livres short, and Louis, in spite of the protest of his counsellors, refused to permit advantage to be taken and insisted on full payment. Many years afterwards, when Louis was dead and canonized, a dream came to his faithful Joinville who was then an old man.

"It seemed to me in my dream that I saw the king in front of my chapel at Joinville; and he was, so he seemed to me, wonderfully happy and glad at heart; and I also was glad at heart, because I saw him in my chateau. And I said to him: 'Sire, when you go hence, I will prepare lodging for you at my house in my village of Chevillon.' And he replied, smiling, and said to me: 'Sire de Joinville, by the troth I owe you, I do not wish so soon to go from here.' When I awoke I bethought me; and it seemed to me that it would please God and the king that I should provide a lodging for him in my chapel. So I have placed an altar in honour of God and of him there, where there shall be always chanting in his honour. And I have established a fund in perpetuity to do this."

Godfrey of Bouillon and St. Louis of France show knighthood as inspired by serious and religious motives. We pass on a hundred years after St. Louis, to a famous Chronicle concerning men whose knightly lives exhibit no such religious, and possibly no such serious, purpose, so far at least as they are set forth by this delightful chronicler. His name of course is Sir John Froissart, and his chief work goes under the name of The Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining Countries. It covers the period