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But the illusion which lures on that age fades when the ascetic zeal of the saint is frustrated by the joy of life, and the crusader's valour is broken on the Moslem lances, and the scholastic's indefatigable pursuit of a harmonizing, a reconciling word of reason and of faith, his ardour not less lofty than the crusader's to pierce the ever-thickening host of doubts, discords, fears, fall all in ruins, in accepted defeat or in formulated despair.
You may see them at their proudest in the famous brass at Lynn, where Robert Braunch lies between his two wives, and at his feet is incised a scene representing the feast at which he entertained Edward III royally and feasted him on peacocks. There is a tailor with his shears, as glorious as the Crusader's sword, at Northleach, and a wine merchant with his feet upon a wine cask at Cirencester.
Such men there are, a few, men with an inborn lust of battle, a love of staking their own lives against the heaviest odds; men who, lacking a Crusader's cult or a country's need to cut and thrust for, go out among the savage denizens of the desert seeking opportunity to fight for their faith in their own strong arms and steady nerves; men who shrink from a laurel but treasure a trophy.
It is the land of opportunity opportunity for the children to starve, opportunity to suffer, opportunity to die wretched an' to be glad to die. There's no country in the world where children are tortured as they are in the fact'ries of the United States." "Oh, surely it can't be as bad as that," protested Hamilton. The objection only increased the "crusader's" vehemence.
Louis put on a second time the crusader's badge, "the dear remembrance of his dying Lord," and met his death in the ill-fated expedition to Tunis. So feeble was the king when he left Paris, that Joinville carried him from the Hôtel of the Count of Auxerre to the Cordeliers, where the old friends and fellow-warriors in the Holy Land parted for ever.
We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy that swung its green banners down from towers and turrets where once some old Crusader's flag had floated. We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it was there. "Well," he said; "there is a legend connected with that iron hook.
I sometimes wish I had lived no! I do not. That's dreaming. I have lived in the best of all times, when you do not have to dream things good, but can help make them so. All the same, when I put on the old crusader's cross which King Christian sent me a year ago from Denmark, and think of the valiant knights who wore it, I feel glad and proud that, however far behind, I may ride in their train.
Let me finish by recalling one brighter picture of that same season. It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite spire became slowly visible.
The young King, Louis VII of France, had already taken the Crusader's vow, but so far the earnest entreaty of his minister, Suger, Abbot of St. Denys, had kept him from his purpose. But at the Council of Vezelai in 1146 the eloquence of Bernard bore down all considerations of prudence. Conrad III was much harder to persuade, for he felt the need of his presence at home.
And, though she did not suspect it, she had in her the Crusader's spirit. "I have always remembered what you once said, that many who believed themselves Christians had an instinctive feeling that there is a spark in Christianity which, if allowed to fly, would start a conflagration beyond their control. And that they had covered the spark with ashes.
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