no nourishment till he had received the
cross. At last the Bishop of Paris yielded, and gave him a cross. The
king received it with transport, kissing it, and placing it right gently
Upon his breast." "When the queen, his mother, knew that he had taken
the cross," says Joinville, "she made as great mourning as if she had
seen him dead."

Still more than three years rolled by before Louis fulfilled the
engagement which he had thus entered into, with himself alone, one might
say, and against the wish of nearly everybody about him. The crusades,
although they still remained an object of religious and knightly
aspiration, were from the political point of view decried; and, without
daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical, had no
desire to take part in them. Under the influence of this public feeling,
timidly exhibited but seriously cherished, Louis continued, for three
years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of his kingdom and to
his relations with the European powers, as if he had no other idea.
There was a moment when his wisest counsellors and the queen his mother
conceived a hope of inducing him to give up his purpose. "My lord king,"
said one day that same Bishop of Paris, who, in the crisis of his
illness, had given way to his wishes, "bethink you that, when you
received the cross, when you suddenly and without reflection made this
awful vow, you were weak, and, sooth to say, of a wandering mind, and
that took away from your words the weight of verity and authority. Our
lord the pope, who knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your
weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation. Lo! we have
the puissance of the schismatic Emperor Frederick, the snares of the
wealthy King of the English, the treasons but lately stopped of the
Poitevines, and the subtle wranglings of the Albigensians to fear;
Germany is disturbed; Italy hath no rest; the Holy Land is hard of
access; you will not easily penetrate thither, and behind you will be
left the implacable hatred between the pope and Frederick. To whom will
you leave us, every one of us, in our feebleness and desolation? "Queen
Blanche appealed to other considerations, the good counsels she had
always given her son, and the pleasure God took in seeing a son giving
heed to and believing his mother; and to hers she promised, that, if he
would remain, the Holy Land should not suffer, and that more troops
should be sent thither