The ceremony of swearing the oath to Louis took place in the square (now the Place Dauphine) at the western end of the palace. Amid a great gathering of nobles and priests both French and English, Henry, dressed with no sign of his royal state, not even wearing sword, spurs, cape or head covering, knelt before Louis, laid his hands in his, and made oath, “Sir, I become your liegeman with mouth and hands, and I swear and promise you faith and loyalty, and to guard your right according to my power, and to do fair justice at your summons or the summons of your bailiff, to the best of my wit.” Wise as he was in the rearing of his children, just to his people so that even the quarrelsome lords brought their troubles to his Paris court, generous to the poor and merciful to the afflicted, Louis was cruelly harsh to those whom he considered at fault on the score of religion. Heretics, so-called, he punished with severity; blasphemers he caused to be branded on the mouth, saying that he himself would consent to be branded with a hot iron if by that means all profane oaths might be removed from his realm. “I was full twenty-two years in his company,” says de Joinville, “and never heard him swear by God nor His Mother nor His Saints. When he wished to affirm anything he would say ‘Truly that was so,’ or ‘Truly, that is so.’” On one occasion when he had commanded the branding of a Paris burgher the decree was harshly criticised by the people. When these same folk a little later were praising the king for some good works that he had done for the city he said that he expected more favor from God for the curses that his branding order had brought down upon his head than for the honor that he received for these good works. Queen Blanche was given to benevolence and during her regency set her son an example which he willingly followed throughout his life. It was she who excited his interest in continuing the rebuilding of the Hôtel Dieu, the hospital which had stood in one guise or another for some half dozen centuries on the south side of the Cité between the cathedral and the river. A later annex was built on the left bank of the Seine adjoining Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, and this section was not demolished until 1908, although the buildings on the Cité were torn down and the present Hôtel Dieu on the north of the cathedral was built some forty years ago.