reason of the r's in it." [Illustration: LA SAINTE CHAPELLE.] At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards Jews and Infidels. "Let me tell you a story," said St. Louis. "The monks of Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned clerks and Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for love of Christ was given bread and shelter at the monastery, approached the abbot and begged leave to say the first word. The abbot, after some protest against the irregularity, was persuaded to grant permission, and the knight, leaning on his stick, requested that the greatest scholar and rabbi among the Jews might be brought before him. 'Master,' said the knight, 'do you believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus and held Him at her breast, and that she is the Virgin Mother of God?' The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. 'Then,' said the knight, 'fool that thou art to have entered God's house and His church, and thou shalt pay for it.' Thereupon he lifted his stick, smote the rabbi under the ear and felled him to the ground. The terrified Jews fled, carrying their master with them, and so," said St. Louis, "ended the conference. And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute: the business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the miscreant's body as far as it will go." Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although severe in exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in converting them and held many of their orphan children at the font. To others he gave pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say, 'Verily it is so, or verily it is not so.' Before going to bed he would call his children around him and recite the fair deeds and sayings of ancient princes and kings, praying that they would remember them for good ensample; for unjust and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through pride and avarice and rapine." The good king essayed to deal with some social evils at court, but in vain:[53] he could only give the example of a pure and chaste life. When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen lord of Egypt who caused all the best books of philosophy to be transcribed for the use of young men, and he determined to do the like for the youth of Paris. Scribes were sent to copy the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers, preserved in various abbeys in France. He had a