BLANCHE OF CASTILLE. 29

Charlemagne. On the death of his father, Louis,
then in his twelfth year, became King of France, at
a time when it recuired a man with a strong hand
to maintain the privileges of the crown against the
ereat nobles of the kingdom. Fortunately for the
young monarch Providence had blessed him with a
mother, who, whatever her faults and failings—and
chroniclers have not spared her reputation—brought
to the terrible task of governing in a feudal age a
high spirit and a strong will, and applied herself
earnestly to the duty of bringing up her son in the
way in which he should walk, and educating him in
such a manner as to prepare him for executing the
high functions which he was destined to fulfil.
While, with the aid of her chivalrous admirer, the
Count of Champagne, and the counsel of a cardinal-
legate—with whom, by-the-bye, she was accused of
being somewhat too familiar—Blanche of Castille
maintained the rights of the French monarchy against
the great vassals of France, she reared her son with
the utmost care. She entrusted his education to
excellent masters, appointed persons eminent for
piety to attend to his religious instruction, and
evinced profound anxiety that he should lead a
virtuous and holy life.

‘Rather,’ she once said, ‘would I see my son in
his grave, than learn that he had committed a mortal
sin.’

As time passed on, Blanche of Castille had the
gratification of finding that her toil and her anxiety
Were not in vain. Louis, indeed. was a model whom
other princes, in their teens, would have done well