The moral qualities of Louis IX., as well as his repute for sound judgment, led to his selection by foreigners to arbitrate their disputes, as when Henry III. of England and his barons submitted their differences to the French king’s opinion. He was by impulse and principle a philanthropist, loving the people of all conditions. The sick domestics of the palace were often nursed by the royal hand. Wherever he went his servants were ordered to distribute sufficient money to provide for the needs of one hundred poor persons, that the people might not feel the shadow of royalty without its sunshine. The chroniclers delight in picturing the monarch under the broad tree, listening to the complaints of a crowd of his humblest subjects. That justice and mercy might extend beyond his personal supervision, he appointed “restitution offices,” where the best of men granted rehearing of any case in which a worsted litigant deemed himself injured by the letter of the law. This, perhaps, is the first institution in the spirit of our modern courts of equity. During an illness, in which he thought he might die, he summoned his son Louis and said, “Fair son, I pray thee make thyself beloved of the people of thy kingdom, for verily I would rather a Scot should come and govern our people well and loyally than have thee govern them ill.” The piety of Louis shone in his care of religious houses and in the establishment of hospitals, especially for leprosy, a disease which was brought into Europe by pilgrims returning from the East. Churches were multiplied and ornamented, for, said the monarch, “the most sure means to avoid perishing like the impious is to love and enrich the place in which dwells the glory of the Lord.”