waiting at Damietta for
his brother, the Comte de Poitiers, and his army, and was very uneasy
about the delay in his arrival. Joinville told the legate of the miracle
that had happened on their voyage to Cyprus. The legate consented to have
three processions on three successive Saturdays, and on the third Saturday
the Comte de Poitiers and his fleet arrived before Damietta. One more
instance may suffice. On their return to France a sailor fell overboard,
and was left in the water. Joinville, whose ship was close by, saw
something in the water; but, as he observed no struggle, he imagined it
was a cask. The man, however, was picked up; and when asked why he did not
exert himself, he replied that he saw no necessity for it. As soon as he
fell into the water he commended himself to _Nostre Dame_, and she
supported him by his shoulders till he was picked up by the King's galley.
Joinville had a window painted in his chapel to commemorate this miracle;
and there, no doubt, the Virgin would be represented as supporting the
sailor exactly as he described it.

Now, it must be admitted that before the tribunal of the ordinary
philosophy of the nineteenth century, these miracles would be put down
either as inventions or as exaggerations. But let us examine the thoughts
and the language of that age, and we shall take a more charitable, and, we
believe, a more correct view. Men like Joinville did not distinguish
between a general and a special providence, and few who have carefully
examined the true import of words would blame him for that. Whatever
happened to him and his friends, the smallest as well as the greatest
events were taken alike as so many communications from God to man. Nothing
could happen to any one of them unless God willed it. "God wills it," they
exclaimed, and put the cross on their breasts, and left house and home,
and wife and children, to fight the infidels in the Holy Land. The King
was ill and on the point of death, when he made a vow that if he
recovered, he would undertake a crusade. In spite of the dangers which
threatened him and his country, where every vassal was a rival, in spite
of the despair of his excellent mother, the King fulfilled his vow, and
risked not only his crown, but his life, without a complaint and without a
regret. It may be that the prospect of Eastern booty, or even of an
Eastern throne, had some part in exciting the pious zeal of the French
chivalry. Yet if we read of Joinville, w