were magnificent festivities at Compiegne in honor
of the event, the young prince being knighted and made Count of Artois.
Alphonse, betrothed to the daughter of Raymond of Toulouse, was married
in 1238. The next year Blanche provided a rich and most desirable bride
for her nephew, Alphonse de Portugal, who had been reared at the French
court. He married the widow of Philippe Hurepel, Mahaut de Boulogne, and
was a faithful vassal of France until he became King of Portugal in
1248. For each of these weddings Blanche saw that there was suitable
provision in the way of new and elegant clothes and entertainments in
keeping with the occasion.

[Illustration 5: BLANCHE OF CASTILLE, MOTHER OF SAINT LOUIS.
After the painting by Moreau de Tours.
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. 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.
At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of-money and of
bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of the Church.]

In the larger world, Louis IX. still sought the counsel of his mother:
"He sought her presence in his council, whenever he could have it with
profit or advantage." In judicial proceedings particularly, we still
find her acting in her sovereign capacity; and she continued to keep an
eye upon those who had formerly been the rebel barons, her name being
associated with that of Louis in various acts concerning the shifty
Pierre Mauclerc. For her unfortunate cousin, Raymond of Toulouse, she
still exerted her influence with the Pope to obtain some relief from the
obligation which he had been forced to assume of spending five years in
the Holy Land. It was at his mother's instance, too, that Louis IX.
bought from the young Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople those most holy
relics, the Crown of Thorns and the large portion of the true Cross, to
receive which Louis built the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle. The purchase
was really arranged as an excuse for contributing largely to the
depleted treasury of the Christian Empire of the East, whose emperor was
doubly related to Saint L