sacred symbol from his shoulder and surrendered it to the bishop. Then, while those present had hardly recovered from their delight and astonishment, he spoke again: "Friends, now surely I am not lacking in sense, I am not weak or troubled in spirit; I demand my cross again; He Who knows all things knows that no food shall pass my lips until the cross is placed once more on my shoulder." There was no turning aside a man of such character; the preparations for the crusade went on, and Saint Louis raised the Oriflamme at Saint-Denis on June 12, 1248. We shall not tell of the crusade or of Louis's characteristic conscientiousness in seeing, before he left, that reparation was made for every act of injustice done in his kingdom, for which purpose he sent out a commission charged with holding an inquest in all parts of France. The inevitable day of separation came, the day to which Blanche looked forward as the last upon which she would see her son. She accompanied him for the first three or four days of his journey, which lay through southern France to Aigues-Mortes, and at Corbeil she received the regency, with power to act in the government through what agents she pleased and in what way she pleased. The guardianship of his children, too, Louis left to Blanche. At Cluni came the scene of final separation; the grief of Blanche can be imagined, and words would fail to help us to a realization of its intense sincerity. Her premonition was well founded; she was not to live to see Louis again. Once more was Blanche de Castille regent of France, a heavy burden for one who had lived a life of no easy indulgence and who was now sixty years of age. Instead of peace and rest in her declining years--perchance she had hoped to retire to her own convent of Maubuisson--she must undertake the cares of government. Truly, Saint Louis was sacrificing his mother for an ambition, albeit not a vain or selfish ambition, and whatever service he may have rendered God by killing some hundreds of Mohammedans in Egypt, there is no question about the service Blanche was rendering to him and France.