While awaiting the time when he should be able to gratify his pious hope of becoming a Crusader, Louis diverted himself and feudal France by royal and knightly festivities. He had assigned the province of Poitiers to his second brother Alphonse, but the young prince had not yet received his investiture as a knight, nor had he been put in possession of his domain. In order to perform this double ceremony, the King summoned to Saumur his full court--that is, all his noble vassals, lay and ecclesiastic. There were political motives for this assemblage and for the place of its meeting. The monarch of France displayed all his power and all his magnificence on the confines of Poitiers, and in the centre of a district formerly possessed by the kings of England. {27} 'The King,' says Joinville, who was present, 'gave this feast in the halls at Saumur, which the great King Henry of England [Footnote 7] had erected, it was said, for his own banquets. [Footnote 7: Henry II. son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou.] This edifice is built after the fashion of cloisters belonging to the White Monks' (monks of the Cistercian order), 'but I doubt if any cloisters could ever have been nearly so large. And I will tell you why I think so: in that aisle of the hall at Saumur where the King banqueted, surrounded by all his knights and officers, who occupied a great deal of space, there was a table where twenty bishops and archbishops were feasted. And beyond the bishops and archbishops there was another table at which was the Queen-mother, Blanche: this was at the further end of the cloisters, and not where the King was eating. In waiting upon Queen Blanche were the Count of Boulogne, afterwards King of Portugal; the good Count of St. Pol, and a German, aged about eighteen, who was said to be the son of the holy Elizabeth of Thuringia. On this account it was said that Queen Blanche used to kiss him on the forehead, out of religious devotion, because she thought his mother must many times have kissed him there. At the furthermost part of the cloister, moreover, there were kitchens, butteries, pantries, and other offices; from this part bread, meat, and wine were served out to the King and Queen. In the other aisles and in the open space in the centre of the cloisters there feasted such a harvest of good knights that I could not attempt to number them, and the people who looked on said they had never seen such a number of surcoats and other vestments of cloth of gold at any banquet as there were there, and they say that above three thousand knights and cavaliers were present.'