PROFIT TO BE DERIVED FROM THE THREATENINGS OF GOD

Now let us return to our subject, and proceed. After we had escaped from these two perils, the king sat himself on he bulwark of the ship, and made me sit at his feet, and spoke hues: “Seneschal, our God has shown us His great power 1 this: that a little wind not one of the four great master hends! has come near to drowning the King of France, is wife, and his children, and all his company. Now are we found to give Him grace and thanks for the peril from which .e has delivered us. Seneschal,” said the king, “ such tribulations, when they come to people, or great sicknesses, I great persecutions, are, as the saints tell us, the threaten- digs of our Saviour.

For just as God says to those who scape from great sicknesses: ‘ Now see how I might have trough your life to an end, had/such been My will,’ even so oculi He now say to us: ‘ You see how I might have drowned of all, had such been My will,’ Now ought we,” continued he king, “ to look to ourselves, and see if there is anything n us that displeases Him, and on account whereof He has hues placed us in fear and jeopardy; and if we find anything n us that displeases Him, we should cast it out. For if we lo otherwise, after the warning He has given us, He will mite us with death, or with some other great tribulation, to he destruction of our bodies and of our souls.” And the The present king, Philip the Fair, whose sister Blanche named Rudolph, the son of the King or Emperor of Germany.

king added: “ Seneschal, the saint says: Lord God, why dost thou threaten us? For if thou destroys us all, Thou wilt be none the poorer; and if Thou saves as alive Thou wilt be none the richer. Whereby we may see,’ says the saint, ‘ that the warnings that God gives us can neither be to His advantage, nor save Him from harm; and that it is only out of His great love that He sends His warnings to awaken us bulgaria tour, so that we may see our defects clearly, and remove from us all that is displeasing to Him.’ Now let us do this,” said the king, “ and we shall be acting wisely.”

THE ISLE OF LAMPEDOUSA

We left the island of Cyprus after we had watered there, and taken in such other things as we required. Then we came to an isle called Lampedousa, where we took a great quantity of conies; and we found an ancient hermitage ir the rocks, and found the garden that the hermits who dwell there had made of old time: where were olives, and figs, and vines, and other trees. The stream from the fountain rare through the garden. The king, and we all, went to the end of the garden, and found an oratory in the first cave, white-washed with lime, and there was there a cross of red earth We entered into the second cave, and found two bodies oil dead men, with the flesh all decayed; the ribs yet held al together, and the bones of the hands were on their breasts and they were laid towards the East, in the same manner that bodies are laid in the earth. ‘When we got back to out ship, we found that one of our mariners was missing; and the master of the ship thought he had remained there to be a hermit: wherefore Nicholas of Soisi, who was the king’s master sergeant, left three bags of biscuit on the shore, so that the mariner might find them, and subsist thereon.

ST. LEWIS FORTIFIES JAFFA

TREATY WITH THE EGYPTIAN EMIRS ST. LEWIS FORTIFIES JAFFA

While the king was fortifying the city of Caesarea, his ivory’s returned from Egypt, and brought with them the eat, as devised by the icing, in the manner already told, nd the covenants between the king and the emirs were such at the king was to go, on a day therein named, to Jaffa; id on the day that the king went to Jaffa the Egyptian lairs were bound by their oaths to be at Gaza to deliver up the king the kingdom of Jerusalem. The treaty, such the envoys brought it, was sworn to by the king, and by e men of note in the host ; and by our oaths we were bound help the emirs against the Soldan of Damascus.

When the Soldan of Damascus knew that we had allied themselves with those in Egypt, he sent full four thousand irks, well appointed, to Gaza, whither those from Egypt ire to come; and this he did because he knew full well that the host from Egypt could join us, it would be to his loss, nevertheless the king did not desist from marching on Jaffa. Tien the Count of Jaffa saw that the king was coming, he eared his castle in such wise that it seemed to be a town :11 capable of defense; for at each of the battlements- of lich there were full five hundred he set a shield, with his us, and a pennon; and this thing was fair to see, for his were with a cross of gules fixate.

We encamped in the fields round the castle, and surrounded the castle, which lies on the sea, from the one sea the other. Forthwith the king betook himself to fortify new burgh, all round the old castle, and going from the one a to the other. Oftentimes I saw the king himself carry- g a hood to the trenches so as to gain the promised indolence.

Aforetime been a Christian

The king asked him where he had learnt French; and he ;aid that he had aforetime been a Christian. Then the king ;aid: “ Away, I will speak to you no further! ” I drew him apart, and asked what was his story. He told me he was aom at Provins, and that he had come to Egypt with King John, and that he was married in Egypt, and a man of great note. And I said: “ Do you not know very well that if you die in this condition you will be damned, and go to hell? ”

And he said “ Yes,” for be was assured no religion was as good as the Christian religion; “ but I dare not face the poverty in which I should be, and the shame, if I returned to you. Every day they would say to me: ‘ Look at that renegade! ’ So I like better to live here rich and at ease rather than put myself ir. such a position as 1 foresee.” And I told him he would have to suffer greater shame in the day of judgment, when his sin would be made manifest to all, than the shame of which he spoke. Many good words did I speak to him, but little did they avail. So he left me, and I never saw LLn more.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE QUEEN AT DAMIETTA

Now you have heard, in what has gone before, of the great tribulations which the king and all of us endured. From such tribulations the queen did not escape, as you shall presently be told. For, three days before she was brought to bed, ‘-ame the news that the king was taken; with which news she was so affrighted that, as oft as she slept in her bed, it seemed to her that the chamber was full of Saracens, and she cried out, “ Help! help! ” And so that the child she bore in her body should not perish, she caused an ancient knight, of eighty years, to lie near her bed, and hold her by the hand; and every time she so cried out, he said: “ Lady, have no fear, for I am here.”

Before she was brought to bed she caused every one to leave her chamber, save this knight only, and knelt before him, and besought him to do her a service; and the knight consented, and gave her his oath. And she said: “ I ask of you, by the troth you have now pledged me, that if the Saracens take thus city, you will cut off my head before I fall into their hands.” And the knight replied: ‘ Be assured that I shall do so willingly; for I was already fully minded to kill you or ever you should be taken.”