Besides the Histoire de Saint Louis, we have from him
a loi^g Credo or profession of religious faith.
There is no reason at all to question the sincerity of
this faith. But Joinville was a shrewd and practical
man, and when the kings of France and Navarre
pressed him to take the cross a second time, he
answered that their majesties' servants had during
his first absence done him and his people so much
harm that he thought he had better not go away
again. Indeed it would be displeasing to God, " qui
mit son corps pour son peuple sauver," if he, Joinville,
abandoned his people. And he reports only in the
briefest abstract the luckless " voie de Tunes," or ex-
pedition to Tunis. But of the earlier and not much
less unlucky Damietta crusade, in which he took part,
as well as of his hero's life till all but the last, he has
written very fully, and in a fashion which is very in-
teresting, though unluckily we have no manuscript
representing the original text, or even near to it in
point of time. The book, which has been thought to
have been written in pieces at long intervals, has

1 Ed. Natalia de Wailly. Paris, 1874.
