The most noteworthy event in French literature in the thirteenth century was the appearance of prose. The first prose writers were not, be it understood, professional historians, but two noblemen, both involved in the events they depicted. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, has left us the history of the Fourth Crusade in the _Conquête de Constantinople_, in which he himself figured. He writes as a soldier, his style being firm and brief, not without a touch of military stiffness; he invents little, goes straight ahead, from one attack to the next, with a brief exclamation when encountering some object which astonishes him. The lord of Joinville, also seneschal of Champagne, exhibits in his _Mémoires_ a greater suppleness of style, a more marked refinement of mind; he observes, reflects, and talks upon all subjects, discussing his personal sentiments as freely as the events of war. He was the foreshadowing of Froissart, as only the councillor and friend of the pious and excellent Louis IX could be.[c] “In point of time,” says Villemain, “the narrative of Joinville is perhaps the first monument of genius in the French language,--a work of genius being, as I understand it, one having a high degree of originality of diction; a characteristic and expressive physiognomy; in short, a work that has been done by one man and that could not have been done by another. Such is the book of Joinville.”[o] France was indebted to St. Louis for the multiplication of manuscripts. It is remarkable that he should first, while in the East, have resolved to establish a library at Paris. Hearing that the soldan of Egypt was indefatigably collecting from all parts, and causing to be transcribed or translated, the works of the ancient philosophers, “he was afflicted,” says a chronicler of the times, “to perceive more wisdom in the sons of darkness than in the children of light.” He began to collect manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments, and of the fathers, which he caused to be multiplied by transcription; all these he placed in the royal chapel at Paris, making them accessible to professors and students. The same liberality was shown by the Dominicans of Toulouse, by the bishops of Beauvais and Paris, by the archbishop of Narbonne, by many chapters, and by more monasteries. The professors of the University of Paris, too, were eminent enough to draw students from all parts of Europe: in fact, such names as Alexander de Hales, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Buonaventura, would have conferred splendour on any establishment. With inferior fame, but probably with equal utility, the universities of Bourges, Toulouse, Orleans, and Angers--foundations of this century--imitated the example of the capital.[n]