and in spite of his gratitude for her
conduct during his first crusade, Saint Louis did not think his wife
capable of playing the role of Blanche de Castille, to which some say
she unwisely aspired. When he was preparing for his second crusade, in
1270, he not only did not leave her the regency, although she was to
remain in France, but he took unusual care to regulate her expenditures
and to hedge about her prerogatives. He forbade her to receive any
presents for herself or her children, to meddle with the administration
of justice, or to choose any person for her service without the consent
of the council of regents. That his precautions were not altogether
without excuse, we see when we learn that Marguerite was already
thinking about securing her position, in case of her husband's death, by
making her son Philippe promise under oath that he would remain in
tutelage until he was thirty years of age; that he would take no
councillor without her approval; that he would inform her of all designs
hostile to her influence; that he would make no treaty with his uncle,
Charles d'Anjou; and that he would keep these engagements secret. The
young Philippe had himself absolved from his oath by the Pope. The
ambition of Marguerite, however, died with the husband whom she had
loved and whom all Europe mourned. The good King Louis is a figure so
heroic in some of its aspects that one must pause and take thought
before venturing on any criticism: his motives cannot be impugned, and
it were an ungrateful task to find fault with his deeds in any
particular.

Marguerite lived on long after her husband in the convent she had
founded in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, which she gave to the nuns in
perpetuity, reserving only a life interest for her daughter, Blanche. It
was here that she was living when she had the joy of hearing proclaimed
the canonization of Louis IX., the saintly King of France. This was just
before her death in 1295.

There are figures in history which have become woefully distorted in the
disfiguring mists of centuries, and others which have been not less
wronged by prejudice, partisanship, or conscious or unconscious
misrepresentation. These--at least some of these--have been in part
indemnified and set right before the world: Louis XI. in France, and his
contemporary Richard III. in England; Cleopatra, Catherine de Medici,
Mary of England, all these and a host of others, we are told now and
then, have been misunders