At the same time that he required in his servitors an almost austere morality, he readily passed over in silence their little faults, and treated them, in such cases, not only with mildness, but with that consideration which, in the humblest conditions, satisfies the self-respect of people, and elevates them in their own eyes.

"Louis used to visit his domestics when they were ill; and when they died he never failed to pray for them, and to commend them to the prayers of the faithful.

He had the mass for the dead, which it was his custom to hear every day, sung for them." He had taken back an old servitor of his grandfather, Philip Augustus, whom that king had dismissed because his fire sputtered, and John, whose duty it was to attend to it, did not know how to prevent that slight noise.
Louis was, from time to time, subject to a malady, during which his right leg, from the ankle to the calf, became inflamed, as red as blood, and painful.

One day, when he had an attack of this complaint, the king, as he lay, wished to make a close inspection of the redness in his leg; as John was clumsily holding a lighted candle close to the king, a drop of hot grease fell on the bad leg; and the king, who had sat up on his bed, threw himself back, exclaiming, "Ah! John, John, my grandfather turned you out of his house for a less matter!" and the clumsiness of John drew down upon him no other chastisement save this exclamation.

(_Vie de Saint Louis,_ by Queen Marguerite's confessor; _Recueiz des Historiens de France,_ t.xx.