,
the natural foe of Richard, with whom the fate of Edith Plantagenet was
to be united. Could I doubt that this must be the Soldan, whose rank
was well known to me, as he often visited my cell to converse on the
revolutions of the heavenly bodies? Again, the lights of the firmament
proclaimed that this prince, the husband of Edith Plantagenet, should
be a Christian; and I--weak and wild interpreter!--argued thence the
conversion of the noble Saladin, whose good qualities seemed often to
incline him towards the better faith. The sense of my weakness hath
humbled me to the dust; but in the dust I have found comfort! I have not
read aright the fate of others--who can assure me but that I may
have miscalculated mine own? God will not have us break into His
council-house, or spy out His hidden mysteries. We must wait His time
with watching and prayer--with fear and with hope. I came hither the
stern seer--the proud prophet--skilled, as I thought, to instruct
princes, and gifted even with supernatural powers, but burdened with
a weight which I deemed no shoulders but mine could have borne. But
my bands have been broken! I go hence humble in mine ignorance,
penitent--and not hopeless."

With these words he withdrew from the assembly; and it is recorded that
from that period his frenzy fits seldom occurred, and his penances were
of a milder character, and accompanied with better hopes of the future.
So much is there of self-opinion, even in insanity, that the conviction
of his having entertained and expressed an unfounded prediction with so
much vehemence seemed to operate like loss of blood on the human frame,
to modify and lower the fever of the brain.

It is needless to follow into further particulars the conferences at the
royal tent, or to inquire whether David, Earl of Huntingdon, was as mute
in the presence of Edith Plantagenet as when he was bound to act under
the character of an obscure and nameless adventurer. It may be well
believed that he there expressed with suitable earnestness the passion
to which he had so often before found it difficult to give words.

The hour of noon now approached, and Saladin waited to receive the
Princes of Christendom in a tent, which, but for its large size,
differed little from that of the ordinary shelter of the common Kurdman,
or Arab; yet beneath its ample and sable covering was prepared a banquet
after the most gorgeous fashion of the East, extended upon carpets of
the richest s