remained motionless and incapable of the slightest resistance.

About the time when King Louis was put in chains, and when Bisset, the
English knight, was endeavouring to escape death or rather captivity,
the sultan arrived at Minieh, and, without any display of generosity for
the vanquished, took measures for improving his victory to the utmost.
The king and his brothers who, like himself, were bound hand and foot,
were conducted in triumph to a boat of war. The oriflamme--that banner
so long the pride of France--was now carried in mockery; the crosses
and images, which the Crusaders had with them as symbols of their
religious faith, were trampled scornfully under foot; and, with trumpets
sounding and kettle-drums clashing, the royal captives were marched into
Mansourah.

It was to the house of Fakreddin Ben Lokman, the secretary of the
sultan, that Louis was escorted; and, on arriving there, he was given
into the custody of the Eunuch Sahil. But, abandoned by fortune, and in
the power of his enemies, Louis was still himself. In chains and
captivity he exhibited the dignity of a king and the resignation of a
Christian, and his jailers could not refrain from expressing their
astonishment at the serene patience with which he bore adversity. Of all
his property, he had only saved his book of psalms; and daily, while
consoling himself with reciting from its pages, he was inspired with
strength and resolution to bear his misfortunes, and to raise his
thoughts far above the malice of his foes.

Meanwhile, at the court of the sultan, everything was not going
smoothly. From the beginning, the emirs and Mamelukes had looked with
envy and suspicion on the favourites brought by Touran Chah from
Mesopotamia; and such feelings had not died away. Many of the favourites
ere long were substituted for the ministers of the late sultan; and the
emirs and Mamelukes not only complained loudly of this to Touran Chah,
but reproached him bitterly for the way in which he disposed of the
spoil of the Crusaders.

'How is this?' asked they; 'you are bestowing the spoils of the
vanquished Franks, not on the men who have borne the burden of the war,
but on men whose sole merit consists in having come from the banks of
the Euphrates to the Nile.'

Now, the sultan's favourites were not unaware of the unfriendly feeling
with which they were regarded by the Mameluke chiefs. Indeed, they saw
all the dangers of their position, and considered it pol