STORY OF ST. LOUIS.
“St. Louis was one of the best men that ever sat on a throne. But he was influenced by the superstitions of the times in which he lived.
“His mother was a most noble and pious woman, and he was a dutiful and affectionate son.
“It was regarded as very pious at this time for a prince to go on a crusade. St. Louis was taken sick, and he made a vow that, if he recovered, he would become a crusader. On his recovery, he appointed his mother regent, and sailed with forty thousand men for Cyprus, where he proceeded against Egypt, thinking by the conquest of that country to open a triumphant way to Palestine. He was defeated, and returned to France.
“He was a model prince among his own people. He used to spend a portion of each day in charity, and to feed an hundred or more paupers every time he went to walk. He visited his own domestics when they were sick; he founded charities, which have multiplied, and to-day cause his name to be remembered with gratitude almost everywhere in France. He made it the aim of his life to relieve suffering wherever it might be found.
“It is related of him, among a multitude of stories, that he was once accosted by a poor woman standing at the door of her cottage, who held in her hand a loaf, and said,—
“‘Good king, it is of this bread that comes of thine alms that my poor, sick husband is sustained.’
“The king took the loaf and examined it.
“‘It is rather hard bread,’ said he; and he then visited the sick man himself and gave the case his personal sympathy.
“IT IS RATHER HARD BREAD.”
“Going out on a certain Good Friday barefoot to distribute alms, he saw a leper on the other side of a dirty pond. He waded through it to the wretched man, gave him alms, then, taking his hand in his own, kissed it. The act greatly astonished his attendants, but the disease was not communicated to him.
DEATH OF ST. LOUIS.
“In 1270 he started on a new crusade, but died in Tunis of the pestilence. Visions of the conquest of the Holy City seemed to fill his mind to the last. He was heard to exclaim on his death-bed in his tent, ‘Jerusalem! Jerusalem! We will go up to Jerusalem!’”
One of the first places which the Class sought out in Rouen was the statue of Joan of Arc. It is placed on a street fountain near the spot where the unfortunate maid was burned. It disappointed our tourists, and seemed an unworthy tribute to such an heroic character. The great tower, called the Tower of Joan of Arc, seemed a more fitting reminder of her achievements.
The streets of Rouen are narrow, but are full of life. Rouen has been called a New Paris, and Napoleon said that Havre, Rouen, and Paris were one city of which the river Seine was the highway. The gable-faced, timber-fronted mansions are interspersed with evidences of modern thrift, and the Rouen of romance seems everywhere disappearing in the Rouen of trade.
The Cathedral of Rouen is a confusing pile of art; it has beautiful rose windows, and its spire is four hundred and thirty-six feet high. The old church of St. Ouen, which is larger and more splendid than the cathedral, is regarded as one of the most perfect specimens of Gothic art in the world. It is 443 feet long.
INTERIOR OF ST. OUEN.
The Palais de Justice, as the old province house or parliament house is called, is an odd but picturesque structure. It lines three sides of a public square.
PALAIS DE JUSTICE, ROUEN.
“To-morrow,” said Master Lewis, after a day of sight-seeing in Rouen, “we go to the most beautiful city in all the world.”
“I wish I knew more about the history of Paris,” said Ernest Wynn, “now that it is so near to us. I think of it as a place of gayety and splendor, the scene of St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, of the Revolution, and the Commune. It was the city that Napoleon seemed to love more than any thing else in the world. What is its early history?”
“You will read in Julius Cæsar’s Commentaries, in your course in Latin,” said Master Lewis, “a brief account of Lutetia, the chief town of the Parisii, a Gallic tribe that the Romans conquered. This, I think, is the oldest historical allusion to Paris, as Lutetia came to be called. It was probably an old town at the time of the Roman invasion; it was chosen by Clovis as the seat of his empire in the sixth century; it began to grow when the Northmen came sailing up the Seine in their strange ships to its gates, and made it their prey. In the tenth century it became the residence of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian line of kings, and soon after increased so rapidly that it doubled in size and population. Under Henri of Navarre, in 1589, the city began to be famous for its tendencies to gayety and splendor. Louis the Great lavished the wealth of France upon it, converting the old ramparts into picturesque public walks or boulevards, and enlarging and adorning its palaces so that they rivalled the royal structures of the East. Then Napoleon I. enriched it with the spoils of Europe, spending on it more than £4,000,000 in twelve years. Napoleon III. completed the work of his predecessors by introducing into the city all modern improvements, and making Paris in every respect the most magnificent capital in Europe.
NORTHMEN ON AN EXPEDITION.
“I have given you in the story of Charlemagne and in the visit to Aix-la-Chapelle a view of the early French Empire; in the story of St. Louis you have had a glance at France at the time of the Crusades; I think I will here tell you a story which will present to you another period of the nation’s history.
THE BARQUES OF THE NORTHMEN BEFORE PARIS.