In the account-books of the leading French families there always occurs a very suggestive chapter, under the heading of alms. In vain does the charitable spirit in its shrinking from ostentation draw a veil over the few lines in which the facts are intentionally summarised. You breathe in passing an aroma of sweetness, just as in going by a dead wall you divine, from whiffs of their scent, the roses and violets on the other side. It was the women’s duty to dispense the alms, and in so doing they obtained, across the arid waste of material preoccupations, grand outlooks towards the ideal. A lady of that period was good from pure goodness of heart; she could let her charity shed its radiance spontaneously, without effort. She lived in the very heart of wretchedness: the filthy hovel, instead of shrinking from her sight and entrenching itself in hateful and inaccessible suburbs, hung upon the walls of the castle, like a parasitic plant. What woman could shut her ears against the cries of wretchedness so near? And charity also was recognised by the State. Louis XII. devoted to it a total of six thousand livres, which he increased in 1509 by one thousand six hundred and forty-two livres; and to ensure a more conscientious distribution he even appointed, in addition to his confessor and almoner, a special functionary, Jacques Acarie, who received the title of “treasurer of the offerings, alms, and devotions.” This fondness for almsgiving the king inherited from his mother, Mary of Cleves, who was generosity itself. She did not confine herself to the charitable doles that were traditional, or almost obligatory, such as the offerings at Easter or All-Hallows: the present of a robe to the “King of the château” on Twelfth Night; New-Year’s presents to a whole village of improvised musicians who came deafening her with drums, clarions, carols, and cries of “_Au guy l’an neuf!_”[61] She went farther afield, to seek out the poor, and in secret she spent her pin-money in succouring them. But these private resources were far from inexhaustible. Like many women, she had a strong predilection for one special work of charity—the care of women in child-bed. She organised for them a regular supply of food, besides giving occasional assistance in money or in kind. She took a personal interest also in the Hospital, and worked with her own hands in a Dorcas society which she founded, and which distributed every year in the little town of Blois five hundred shirts and five hundred dresses. In addition to all this there was a long list of “good works” in a more special sense: little dowries of fifty or sixty sous bestowed on poor girls, who sometimes bore notable names, like “Jeanne the Fair,” “Lawrence and Jeanne de Saint-Prest”; pensions to needy students; alms to convents; subscriptions to churches. The family of Joan of Arc had a special right to the bounty of the faithful: “Perrette de Lys” used to receive fifty sous “to bring up her own children.”