“One of the queen’s bedwomen, when she had put the queen to bed, was heedless, and taking the kerchief that had been wound about her head, threw it into the iron stove on which the queen’s candle was burning, and when she had gone into the cabin where the women slept, below the queen’s chamber, the candle burnt on, till the kerchief caught fire, and from the kerchief the fire passed to the cloths with which the queen’s garments were covered. When the queen awoke she saw her cabin all in flames, and jumped up quite naked and took the kerchief and threw it all burning into the sea, and took the cloths and extinguished them. Those who were in the barge behind the ship cried, but not very loud, ‘Fire! fire!’ I lifted up my head and saw that the kerchief still burned with a clear flame on the sea, which was very still. “I put on my tunic as quickly as I could, and went and sat with the mariners. “While I sat there my squire, who slept before me, came to me and said that the king was awake, and asked where I was. ‘And I told him,’ said he, ‘that you were in your cabin; and the king said to me, “Thou liest!”’ While we were thus speaking, behold the queen’s clerk appeared, Master Geoffrey, and said to me, ‘Be not afraid, nothing has happened.’ And I said, ‘Master Geoffrey, go and tell the queen that the king is awake, and she should go to him, and set his mind at ease.’ “On the following day the constable of France, and my Lord Peter the chamberlain, and my Lord Gervais, the master of the pantry, said to the king, ‘What happened in the night that we heard mention of fire?’ and I said not a word. Then said the king, ‘What happened was by mischance, and the seneschal (De Joinville) is more reticent than I. Now I will tell you,’ said he, ‘how it came about that we might all have been burned this night,’ and he told them what had befallen, and said to me, ‘I command you henceforth not to go to rest until you have put out all fires, except the great fire that is in the hold of the ship.’ (Cooking fire on the ship’s ballast). ‘And take note that I shall not go to rest till you come back to me.’” It is pleasant to think of the queen’s pluck, the knight’s silence, the king’s tact, and to see the inner privacies of that ancient ship. After seven hundred years the gossip is fresh and vivid as this morning’s news. The king brought peace, prosperity and content to all his kingdom, and De Joinville was very angry when in failing health Saint Louis was persuaded to attempt another crusade in Africa. “So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of the Franciscans.” So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a saint on a throne, the noblest of all adventurers, the greatest sovereign France has ever known.