armaments preparing in the ports of the
Mediterranean, he thought it worth while to
send ambassadors to the court of King Louis,
flattering the holy king with hopes of an
exemplary conversion, on his (Muley's) part
illusive and improbable. This he has done
on the King of France first taking up the
cross—not knowing probably where the
storm would fall. His deceit brings the
storm right upon his own head; for King
Louis, being in doubt as to the sincerity or
hypocrisy of this Mussulman neophyte,
resolves to unriddle the pious enigma with a
solution of glaives and hauberks, and steers
direct for Tunis to convert Muley, bon gré if
he can, mal gré if he cannot.

Perhaps a little political reason lurking
beneath this pious resolve: The Tunisians
have infested the seas for years; their rovers
intercept the succours that are sent to the
Christian princes in Palestine; they furnish
neighing steeds, bright weapons, and strong
soldiers to the Sultans of Egypt; there are
the centre of the intrigues that Boudoc-Dari
keeps up with the Moors of Morocco and the
Moors of Spain. So that, besides his anxiety
for Holy Cross, Saint Louis may wish to clear
out a nest of pirates and brigands.

Saint Louis sails gallantly into the Bay of
Tunis at the end of July. About this time
a Moorish prince has undertaken the task of
rebuilding Carthage; some new houses
already begin to show their heads among the
blocks of ruins, a freshly built castle crowns
the summit of the hill of Byrsa. The
Crusaders are struck by the beauty of the
country, covered as it is for miles with olive
trees. Omar el-Muley's conversion has already
vanished into air. To the Christian salutations
of King Louis he responds by a savage
menace, that if one single Crusader lands,
every single Christian subject of his in Tunis
shall be momentarily massacred. But this
menace has no effect on Saint Louis and his
host. They land incontinent; they encamp
in the Isthmus of Carthage, and the French
King's almoner takes possession of the country
of Hannibal, saying these words: "I say to
you the ban of our Lord and of Louis, King
of France, his sergeant." This same country
and spot has heard spoken Getulian, Syrian,
Vandal, Greek, and Arabic, and always
expressing the same passions, couched in different
tongues.

Saint Louis resolves to take Carthage before
besieging Tunis; for Tunis is rich and strongly
fortified. He drives the Saracens from a
tower, which defends the cisterns of Carthage;
he rases the new castle; in fancied security
the stores of the expedition are disembarked,
ultimately also the noble dames; and, by one
of the revolutions that centuries bring round,
the great ladies of France establish themselves
among the ruins of the palace of Dido.

But fortune is fleeting, and fate is remorseless,
and prosperity evanescent. Carthage is
taken; but Tunis yet remains to be subdued,
and Tunis cannot be taken without succours
being received from Louis's brother the King
of Sicily. Sweltering, perforce, on the sandy
isthmus, the army is attacked by a contagious
malady which, in a few days, diminishes its
strength by one-half. The fierce African sun
literally devours men accustomed to dwell
beneath a mild and equably temperate sky.
In order to augment the misery of the
Crusaders, the Moors fill the air, by means of
machines, with burning sand; in their infernal
ingenuity they imitate the effect of the famous
khan-sim or wind of the desert—an ingenuity
worthy of the awful solitudes in which it has
been engendered, showing to what pitch men
can carry the genius of destruction.
Continual combats and skirmishes weaken the
forces of the army; the living no longer
suffice to bury the dead; the corpses are
thrown into the ditches that form the
entrenchments of the camp: these soon overflow
with the stream of death.

Already the Counts of Nemours, Montmorency,
and Vendôme, are dead; the king has
seen expire in his arms his best beloved son
the Count of Nevers. Then the arrow strikes
him; and from that moment he knows that
its wound is mortal, that the blow is sufficient
to prostrate a frame already half-worn out
by fatigue, mental and physical. Yet sincere
in all other things—loving the truth above all
—Saint Louis dissimulates now. He hides
his illness from his courtiers and his people; he
feigns vigour and cheerfulness while the hand of
Death is weighing him down. Still struggling,
and fighting Death with bold front and resolute
mien, he goes daily and nightly the round
of the hospitals. From holy works he passes
to royal duties. The safety of the camp has
to be looked after; an intrepid front has to
be made to the Paynims; justice has to be
rendered to the King's lieges, beneath the
shadow of the King's tent-curtains, as in the
old days beneath the oaks of Vincennes.

For days, Prince Philip, the eldest born
and heir of Louis, has not quitted his royal
father. He is at last obliged to keep his
tent; then, thinking that the hours of his
utility to his people are numbered, but that it
behoves him to provide for their well-being
even after his death, he writes his will.
Ducange, the antiquary, has seen the
manuscript in the saintly King's own writing. The
characters are large, yet feebly traced; they
are the weak expressions of a strong soul, for
the will is full of wisdom, and goodness, and
simple-mindedness, and sage advice to his son
Philip for the well governing of the kingdom
and people that are soon to be his.

On the Monday morning, the twenty-fifth
of August, Saint Louis of France, being in
extremity, demands and receives extreme
unction; then he causes himself to be stretched
on a bed of cinders, and—crossing his arms
over his breast, and raising his eyes to
Heaven—waits for death.

The sight has been seen but once, and