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.

JUDGMENTS PRONOUNCED AT CESAREA

The king had given me for my battalion fifty knights Every time that I ate, I had ten knights at my table wit! my own ten knights; and they ate, one sonly the other according to the custom of the land, and sale upon mats 01 the ground. Every time that there was a call to arms, ‘ sent thither fifty-four knights, who were called douzeniers because each commanded ten men. Every time that w rode out armed, all the fifty knights ate in my quarters 01 their return. At all the annual festivals I asked to m; table all the men of note in the host, whereby it sometime; happened that the king had to borrow some of my guests.

SOME OF TINS JUDGMENTS PRONOUNCED AT CESAREA

Hereinafter you shall hear tell of the justice and judgments that I saw rendered at Caesarea while the king was sojourning there. First we will tell of a knight who was taken in a brothel, and to whom a certain choice was left according to the customs of the country. And the choice was this: that either the wanton woman should lead hirer through the camp, in his shirt, and shamefully bound with a rope, or that he should lose his horse and arms and tx driven from the host. The knight gave up his horse to the king, and his arms, and left the host. Then I went and asked the king to give me the horse for a poor gentleman who was in the host. And the king answered me that this re quest was not reasonable, seeing that the horse was still worth eighty livres. And I replied: “ Now have you broker our covenant, for you are wroth with me for my request.’ And he said to me, laughing merrily: “ Say what you like, I am not wroth with you.” Nevertheless I did not get the horse for the poor gentleman.

The second judgment was this: the knights of our battalion were hunting a wild animal that is called a gazelle, and is like a deer. The brethren of the Hospital leapt out upon our knights, and hustled them and drove them away. So I complained to the Master of the Hospital; and the Master of :he Hospital answered that he would do me right according to the customs of the Holy Land, which were such that he would cause the brethren who had committed the outrage o eat sitting on their mantles, until such time as those on thorn the outrage had been committed should raise them up.

LOYALTY OF THE KING IN CARRYING OUT THE TREATY

When the counting was over, the king’s councilors, who had effected the counting, came to the king, and said that the Saracens would not deliver his brother until the money was actually in their possession. There were those of the council who thought that the king should not hand over the moneys until he had received his brother back. But the king replied that he would hand them over, seeing he had covenanted with the Saracens to do so, and as for the Saracens, if they wished to deal honestly, they would also hold to the terms of their covenant. Then my Lord Philip of Nemours told the king that they had miscounted, by a measure of ten thousand livres, to the prejudice of the Saracens.

Lord Philip

At this the king was very wroth, and said it was his will that the ten thousand limes should be restored, seeing he had covenanted to pay two hundred thousand livres before he left the river. Then I touched my Lord Philip with my foot, and told the king not to believe him, seeing that the Saracens were the wiliest reckoners in the whole world. And my Lord Philip said I was saying sooth, for he had only spoken in jest; and the king said such jests were unseemly and untoward. “ And I command you,” said the king to my Lord Philip, “ by the fealty that you owe to me as being my liegeman which you are that if these ten thousand livres have not been paid you will cause them to be paid without fail.”

Many people had advised the king to withdraw to his ship, which waited for him at sea, so as to be no longer in the hands of the Saracens. But he would never listen to them, saying he should not depart from the river, as he had covenanted, until such time as he had paid the two hundred thousand livres. So soon, however, as the payment had been made, the king, without being urged thereto, said that henceforth he was acquitted of his oaths, and that we should depart thence, and go to the ship that was on the sea.

Then our galley was set in motion, and we went a full great league before one spoke to another, because of the distress in which we were at leaving the Count of Poitiers in captivity. Then came my Lord Philip of Montfort in a galleon, and cried to the king: “ Sire, sire! speak to your brother, the Count of Poitiers, who is in this other ship! ” Then cried the king: “ Light up! light up! ” And they did so. Then was there such rejoicing among us that greater could not be. The king went to the count’s ship, and we went too. A poor fisherman went and told the Countess of Poitiers that he had seen the Count of Poitiers released, and she caused twenty livres paresis to be given to him.