rd during thirty-four days of his mission. They averaged about ten
per day. The disciples of St. Bernard complained bitterly that the
people flocked around their master in such numbers, that they could not
see half the miracles he performed. But they willingly trusted the eyes
of others, as far as faith in the miracles went, and seemed to vie with
each other whose credulity should be greatest.] The Emperor Conrad
caught at last the contagion from his subjects, and declared his
intention to follow the Cross.

The preparations were carried on so vigorously under the orders of
Conrad, that in less than three months he found himself at the head of
an army containing at least one hundred and fifty thousand effective
men, besides a great number of women who followed their husbands and
lovers to the war. One troop of them rode in the attitude and armour of
men: their chief wore gilt spurs and buskins, and thence acquired the
epithet of the golden-footed lady. Conrad was ready to set out long
before the French Monarch, and in the month of June 1147, he arrived
before Constantinople, having passed through Hungary and Bulgaria
without offence to the inhabitants.

Manuel Comnenus, the Greek Emperor, successor not only to the throne,
but to the policy of Alexius, looked with alarm upon the new levies who
had come to eat up his capital and imperil its tranquillity. Too weak
to refuse them a passage through his dominions, too distrustful of them
to make them welcome when they came, and too little assured of the
advantages likely to result to himself from the war, to feign a
friendship which he did not feel, the Greek Emperor gave offence at the
very outset. His subjects, in the pride of superior civilization,
called the Germans barbarians, while the latter, who, if
semi-barbarous, were at least honest and straight-forward, retorted
upon the Greeks by calling them double-faced knaves and traitors.
Disputes continually arose between them, and Conrad, who had preserved
so much good order among his followers during their passage, was unable
to restrain their indignation when they arrived at Constantinople. For
some offence or other which the Greeks had given them, but which is
rather hinted at than stated by the scanty historians of the day, the
Germans broke into the magnificent pleasure garden of the Emperor,
where he had a valuable collection of tame animals, for which the
grounds had been laid out in woods, caverns, groves, and stre