[54] St. Louis loved the Franciscans, and in the Fioretti a beautiful story is told how the king, in the guise of a pilgrim, visiting Brother Giles at Perugia, knelt with the good friar in an embrace of fervent affection for a great space of time in silence. They parted without speaking a word, marvellously comforted.
[55] The innocence of Marie Antoinette in this scandalous affair has been clearly established. See L'affaire du Collier, by M. Funck Brentano. Paris, 1903.
[56] It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.
[57] Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Marseilles he called all his friends and household before him, and declared that if he had wronged any one of them reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was assoiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair château of Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly.
[58] The relics were transferred to a new church of St. Stephen (St. Étienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish church for his servants and tenants.
[59] The early glass-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the windows of the Sainte Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time.
[60] The researches of Professor Strzygowski of Gratz, and other authorities in the field of Byzantine and Eastern archæology, tend to prove the dominant importance of the Christian East in the development of early ecclesiastical architecture and the subordinate influence of Roman models.
[61] Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian nobles with the large, spacious and painted houses of the French, their rooms adorned pour avoir joie et delit and surrounded with orchards and gardens.
[62] Par. XVI. 51.
[63] Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public hot baths, a larger proportion to population than exists to-day, and Dr. Gasquet has described in his English Monastic Life the admirable provisions for personal cleanliness made in mediæval monasteries.