On another occasion the King told St. Bonaventure that someone had approached him saying, "The Lord our God has three crowns, one of gold, one of thorns and the other incorruptible--the crown of Eternal Life. Two of these He has bestowed on you. I earnestly recommend you, however, that after the example of Jesus Christ, you strive to acquire by your good works the crown of Eternal Life. What will the two crowns you have avail you, if you secure not the third?" "Now it seems to me," was the pious King's comment, "that he spoke with very much wisdom. {90} His words entered my very heart." This lesson, our Saint adds, he also impressed on his court. St. Louis once sought St. Bonaventure's opinion on an abstruse philosophic-theological question. "May a man," queried the King, "choose rather to be annihilated than to remain in everlasting torments? or ought he to prefer eternal torture to non-existence?" "Sire," answered Bonaventure, "endless torments presuppose sin and God's undying wrath against sin; and as no one may choose to remain for ever at enmity with God, non-existence is to be preferred to endless suffering." "I hold with Brother Bonaventure," the pious King exclaimed. Then turning to his courtiers he continued, "I assure you I would far rather cease to exist; I would far rather suffer annihilation, than live for ever, even in this world, reigning even as I now reign, and yet withal remain in perpetual enmity with my God." A further incident reveals a still more intimate interchange of ideas. The King once came to Bonaventure and said to him: "The Queen is greatly disturbed because she hears that our son Peter wishes to join the Franciscan Order. I said to her, 'Do not trouble and do not allow the affair to weigh on your mind. Besides, you may mention the matter so often that the youth may come by the desire of joining the Order. Personally I feel assured that the love Brother Bonaventure, their General, bears me will not allow him {91} to receive our son without my being forewarned.' Did I not speak the truth, Brother Bonaventure?" To this our Saint made answer, "Sire, if your son comes to me on this matter, I shall refer to you and lay the responsibility on your shoulders". "No, Brother Bonaventure," replied King Louis, "that would not do. I should not like to have it on my conscience that I stood in the way of my son's following the voice of God." "Pious and holy King!" the narrative concludes, "his soul was so holy and so given to God, he preferred to be deprived of his son's society rather than withdraw that son from the service of God."