not costly,
but the easy-riding palfrey and the war horse ranged in price from
thirty to seventy-five pounds. There were carriages and other vehicles
also, though the carriages were few. The state of the roads, indeed,
often precluded their use; we find Blanche de Castille excusing herself
from going to Saint-Denis because the state of her health forbids her
going on horseback: the roads were probably impassable; or, perhaps, it
was in attempting this little journey that her carriage suffered the
damages recorded in a bill of repairs of 1234, when it seems the unlucky
vehicle needed new wheels. There was a carriage for _la jeune reine_
Marguerite, too, and a new one was purchased in 1239.

Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family,
Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in
charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle
Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing
than it has ever been since those days. During Blanche's regency the
kingdom had been repeatedly ravaged in the course of the wars of the
nobles, and there is record of famine, notably in the southwest of the
kingdom, where one chronicler asserts that in 1235 he saw a hundred
bodies buried in one day in a cemetery at Limoges. On their frequent
journeys throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be
done to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the
wayside in crowds. There were regular officers to allot the alms
properly, and considerable sums were distributed, usually at every stage
on the journey. At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of
money and of bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of
the Church. One special charity of Queen Blanche's deserves notice. When
a girl was to be married, one of the first questions was, and still is,
in France, what dower her parents could give with her; if the dower were
insufficient, the poor girl ran a serious risk of not being married at
all. Blanche often came to the aid of deserving girls so situated, and
her gifts were not confined to her immediate attendants and their
families; for example, a poor woman from Anet, a stranger to the court,
received one hundred sous parisis for the marriage of her daughter; and
while on her way back from Angers, Blanche met a young girl of Nogent,
to whom she gave fifteen pounds for her marriage.

Blanche had always