had owed the tax. With a woman of her character the
canons vainly resorted to their favorite threat of excommunication. If
they had excommunicated her, she would, in the light of history at
least, have been given an absolution more purifying than any they could
offer.

For the common people the great queen had always a tender heart. It was
a rough and cruel age, especially for those in bondage. "And since this
Queen," says an anonymous chronicler, "had great pity for such as were
serfs, she ordered, in several places, that they be set free in
consideration of the payment of some other dues. This she did partly
because of the pity she felt for the girls in this condition, because
people would not marry them, and many of them went to ruin thereby."

The last days of Blanche de Castille were drawing to a close amid sad
and fruitless longing to see her son. Her health was failing; one after
another of those dear to her fell ill or passed away; the dearest of all
lingered in the Holy Land, leading a forlorn hope and deaf to the
entreaties of his mother that he would return. She was at Melun when, in
November, 1252, she became so ill that she hastened to return to Paris.
She put her affairs in order and left instructions that those whom she
had unwittingly wronged should be indemnified out of her private
fortune. All worldly thoughts were now put aside, and she summoned the
Bishop of Paris, took the Holy Communion, and was admitted, by the
prelate's decree, into the Cistercian order, becoming a nun of her Abbey
of Maubuisson. Clothed in the simple garments of the sisterhood, the
noble queen passed, not many days later, from the scene of her useful
labors, murmuring in her last moments the words of the prayer for those
in extremis: _Subvenite, saticti Dei_.

It was on November 26th or 27th, in her sixty-fourth year, that Blanche
died. Over her nun's habit they placed her royal robes, and on her head
the crown; thus clothed, and placed upon a bier ornamented with gold,
she was borne by her sons and the great nobles through the streets of
Paris to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. The next day, after a mass for the
dead, the body was carried in procession to Maubuisson, where another
service was held. Here, in the choir of the chapel, the body of the
queen was buried, and a tomb, bearing her effigy in nun's habit, was
erected. The other convent founded by her wished to have the honor of
guarding her heart, which, in March of the follo