thendom were utterly destroyed or driven from the land. But this
monarch," he continues, "was more kindly disposed toward the infidels
than was honest and lawful in a Christian prince, and was at that very
time in league with the soldan against their common enemy the Grand
Turk."

These pious sentiments of the truly Catholic Agapida are echoed by
Padre Mariana in his history;* but the worthy chronicler Pedro Abarca
attributes the interference of the king of Naples not to lack of
orthodoxy in religion, but to an excess of worldly policy, he being
apprehensive that should Ferdinand conquer the Moors of Granada he might
have time and means to assert a claim of the house of Aragon to the
crown of Naples.

* Mariana, lib. 25, cap. 15.

"King Ferdinand," continues the worthy father Pedro Abarca, "was no less
master of dissimulation than his cousin of Naples; so he replied to
him with the utmost suavity of manner, going into a minute and patient
vindication of the war, and taking great apparent pains to inform him of
those things which all the world knew, but of which the other pretended
to be ignorant."* At the same time he soothed his solicitude about the
fate of the Christians in the empire of the grand soldan, assuring him
that the great revenue extorted from them in rents and tributes would be
a certain protection against the threatened violence.

* Abarca, Anales de Aragon, Rey xxx. cap. 3.

To the pope he made the usual vindication of the war--that it was
for the recovery of ancient territory usurped by the Moors, for the
punishment of wars and violences inflicted upon the Christians, and,
finally, that it was a holy crusade for the glory and advancement of the
Church.

"It was a truly edifying sight," says Agapida, "to behold these friars,
after they had had their audience of the king, moving about the camp
always surrounded by nobles and cavaliers of high and martial renown.
These were insatiable in their questions about the Holy Land, the state
of the sepulchre of our Lord, and the sufferings of the devoted brethren
who guarded it and the pious pilgrims who resorted there to pay their
vows. The portly prior of the convent would stand with lofty and
shining countenance in the midst of these iron warriors and declaim with
resounding eloquence on the history of the sepulchre, but the humbler
brother would ever and anon sigh deeply, and in low tones utter some
tale of suffering and outrage, at wh