eed. A nurse who struck a patient was
excommunicated. Viollet le Duc was of opinion that in many respects
the Hotel Dieu in the Middle Ages was superior to our modern
hospitals. Among many details denoting the tender forethought of the
administrator, we may note that in the ward for the grievously sick
and infirm the beds were made lower, and 60 _cottes_ of white fur and
300 felt boots were provided to keep the poor patients warm when they
were moved from their beds to the _chambres aisees_. In later times,
lax management and the decline of piety which came with the religious
and political changes of the Renaissance made reform urgent, and in
1505 the Parlement appointed a committee of eight _bourgeois clercs_
to control the receipts. The buildings were much increased in 1636,
but were never large enough, and in 1655 the priory of St. Julien was
united to the hospital. "As many as 6000 patients," says Felibien,
writing in 1725, "have been counted there at one time, five or six in
one bed." No limitations of age or sex or station or religion or
country were set. Everybody was received, and in Felibien's time the
upkeep amounted to 500,000 livres per annum. The old Hotel Dieu was
situated to the south of Notre Dame, and stood there until rebuilt on
its present site in 1878.

St. Louis sought diligently over all the land for the _grand sage
homme_ who would prove an honest and fearless judge, punishing the
wicked without regard to rank or riches; and what he exacted of his
officers he practised himself. He punished his own brother, the Count
of Artois, for having forced a sale of land on an unwilling man, and
ordered him to make restitution. The Sire de Coucy, one of the most
powerful of his barons, was summoned to Paris and in spite of his
bravado, arrested, imprisoned in the Louvre and sentenced to death,
for having hanged three young fellows for poaching. The sale of the
provostship of Paris was abolished and a man of integrity, Etienne
Boileau, appointed with adequate emoluments. So completely was this
once venal office rehabilitated, that no seigneur regarded the post as
beneath him. Boileau was wont to sleep in his clothes on a camp bed in
the Chatelet to be in readiness at any hour, and often St. Louis would
be seen sitting beside the provost on the judgment seat, watching over
the administration of justice. The judicial duel in civil cases was
forbidden; the Royal Watch instituted to police the streets of Paris;
t