Many were the king's benefactions to the great hospital of Paris, the Hôtel Dieu. Rules, dating from 1217, for the treatment of the sick poor were elaborated in his reign with admirable forethought. The sick, after confession and communion, were to be put to bed and treated as if they were the masters of the house. They were to be daily served with food before the nursing friars and sisters, and all that they desired was to be freely given if it could be obtained and were not prejudicial to their recovery. If the sickness were dangerous the patient was to be set apart and to be tended with especial solicitude. The sick were never to be left unguarded and even to be kept seven days after they were healed, lest they should suffer a relapse. The friars and sisters were to eat twice a day: the sick whenever they had need. A nurse who struck a patient was excommunicated. In later times, lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious and political changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made reform urgent, and in 1505 the Parliament appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_ to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636, but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Félibien, writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or country were set. Everybody was received, and in Félibien's time the upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hôtel Dieu was situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on its present site in 1878. The king was ever solicitous for the earthly weal of his subjects and made an unpopular peace with England against the advice of his Council. "Sirs," he protested, "the land I give to the king of England I give without being held to do so, that I may awaken love between his children and mine who are cousins germain." [Illustration: RUE DE VENISE.]