92 WORKMEN AND HEROES lermo. The bones and other parts were conveyed back to France. Those who have visited Paris will not forget the exquisite Gothic structure known as the " Sainte Chapelle," which is attached to the Palais de Justice, containing the courts of law. It was erected by Louis as a receptacle for certain supposed relics of Christ. The windows of the chapel are entirely composed of stained glass, and as the sunbeams strike upon them, their tints of crimson, blue, and orange blend into a rainbow-like harmony of glowing and lustrous color, which recalls the heart of Louis IX., enshrined within those walls, as its fitting human antitype. He was canonized about thirty years afterward, under the title of St. Louis. r MARCO POLO* BY NOAH BROOKS (1256-1324) N the month of November, in the year 1295, there ap- peared in the beautiful city of Venice three strangers, who were clothed in an outlandish and shabby garb of a Tar- tar cut They claimed to be of Venice, but, according to one of their biographers, one Ramusio, " through the many worries and anxieties they had undergone, they were quite changed in aspect, and had got a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in air and accent, having, indeed, all but forgotten their Venetian tongue." They went to the house of the Polo family, demanding entrance and claiming to be Nicolo Polo, Maffeo, his brother, and Marco, son of the elder of the two brothers, Nicolo. They were laughed to scorn as pretenders and impostors ; for the three missing members of the Polo family had been gone away from Venice some twenty-odd years ; it was in 1271 that the Polos were last heard from, then at Acre, journeying into the Far East. But the three somehow gained access to their own house, then in the posses- sion of one of their relations. And the news of their home-coming was pres- ently noised abroad throughout the city of Venice ; so much so that the people for days talked of little else save the reappearance in the land of the living of the long-lost travellers. Many, however, doubted if these really were the brothers Polo and young Marco ; this last was a mere lad of seventeen when he went away, and now was grown to be a portly man of forty-odd years. So incredulous were the townsfolk that the brothers hit upon a scheme to convince the doubting ones. They made a grand feast to which all the gentry were invited, for the Polo family were of noble birth and had held station in the state. The enter Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
