f the
despotic dowager who had embittered her life, and almost broken her
heart.

One day, when Louis was recovering from the effects of a fever, which
had so thoroughly prostrated him, that at times his attendants believed
he was dead, he ordered a Cross to be stitched to his garments.

'How is this,' asked Blanche of Castille, when she came to visit her son
on his sick bed.

'Madam,' whispered the attendants, 'the king has, out of gratitude for
his recovery, taken the Cross, and vowed to combat the infidel.'

'Alas! alas!' exclaimed Blanche, terrified, 'I am struck as fearfully as
if I had seen him dead.'

CHAPTER V.

TAKING THE CROSS.

A CENTURY and a half had elapsed since Peter the Hermit roused
Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, and since Godfrey and the
Baldwins established the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem; and in the
interval, many valiant warriors--including Richard Coeur de Lion, and
Philip Augustus, and Frederick Barbarossa--had gone forth to light in
its defence; and the orders of military monks--the Knights of the
Temple, the Knights of St. John, the Knights of St. Katherine of Sinai,
and the Teutonic Knights, had risen to keep watch over the safety of the
Holy Sepulchre. But the kingdom of Jerusalem, constantly exposed to rude
shocks, far from prospering, was always in danger of ruin; and in 1244
the Holy City, its capital, was taken and sacked by a wild race, without
a country, known as the Karismians, who, at the sultan's instance,
slaughtered the inhabitants, opened the tombs, burnt the bodies of
heroes, scattered the relics of saints and martyrs to the wind, and
perpetrated such enormities as Jerusalem, in her varying fortunes, had
never before witnessed.

When this event occurred, the Christians of the East, more loudly than
ever, implored the warriors of Europe to come to their rescue. But, as
it happened, most of the princes of Christendom were in too much trouble
at home to attend to the affairs of Jerusalem. Baldwin Courtenay,
Emperor of Constantinople, was constantly threatened with expulsion by
the Greeks; Frederick, Emperor of Germany, was at war with the Pope; the
King of Castille was fighting with the Moors; the King of Poland was
fully occupied with the Tartars; the King of Denmark had to defend his
throne against his own brother; the King of Sweden had to defend his
throne against the Tolekungers. As for Henry King of England, he was
already involved in those dis