The natural piety of St. Louis but strengthened with his growth. His Christian life, or to reduce the statement to its simplest terms, his daily Christianity, which edified his own century, might very easily fill ours with a sense of shock. But whatever it may leave of such an impression, the history would be incomplete which passed over in silence, or only vaguely indicated, that which filled so large a part in his life. Let us not, therefore, endeavour to build up for ourselves a St. Louis in accordance with our present-day tastes. Nothing is beautiful but the true, and that truth which the saintly king sought in all things is alone worthy to retrace the likeness of him which should endure. According to those of his historians who were most intimate with him--the chaplain who accompanied him on one and another of the Crusades, the confessor whom he kept beside him for twenty years, the confessor of his wife Marguerite--he seemed to live for God alone. The offices were read in the king’s chapel; almost it might have been the chapel of a monastery or the choir of a cathedral. There he had the Hours sung to him, the Office for the Dead being added by his command. He heard two masses, sometimes three or four; and when the grandees grumbled at his wasting so much time on masses and sermons, he retorted that if he were to lose twice as much time over gaming and hunting no one would complain: a remark which scarcely silenced the murmurs; the barons made no complaint against thus wasting their time with him. The holy Scriptures and the Fathers were his study. Marguerite’s confessor tells us that he caused a candle three feet or thereabouts in height to be lighted, and so long as it lasted read the Bible. He remained for so long a time upon his knees that sometimes his sight and his wits became confused, and, rising up quite dazed, he would ask: “Where am I?” Led back to his room, he would go to bed, but at midnight he was up again and had matins sung by his chaplains (it was no sinecure being king’s chaplain in those days!). He would, however, grant to his attendants the repose he refused for himself. So softly did he rise that on several occasions they did not hear him, or, awakened too late, ran after him barefoot.