When St. Jean d’Acre had been taken, the judicious Philip, in view of what it had cost the Christians of East and West, in time and blood, to recover this single town, considered that a fresh and complete conquest of Palestine and Syria, which was absolutely necessary for a re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem, was impossible:  he had discharged what he owed to the crusade; and the course now permitted and prescribed to him was to give his attention to France.  The news he received from home was not encouraging; his son Louis, hardly four years old, had been dangerously ill; and he himself fell ill, and remained some days in bed, in the midst of the town he had just conquered.  His enemies called his illness in question, for already there was a rumor abroad that he had an idea of giving up the crusade, and returning to France; but the details given by contemporary chroniclers about the effects of his illness scarcely permit it to be regarded as a sham.  “Violent sweats,” they say, “committed such havoc with his bones and all his members, that the nails fell from his fingers and the hair from his head, insomuch that it was believed—­and, indeed, the rumor is not yet dispelled—­that he had taken a deadly poison.”  There was nothing strange in Philip’s illness, after all his fatigues, in such a country and such a season; Saladin, too, was ill at the same time, and more than once unable to take part with his troops in their engagements.  But, however that may be, a contemporary English chronicler, Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, relates that, on the 22d of July, 1191, whilst King Richard was playing chess with the Earl of Gloucester, the Bishop of Beauvais, the Duke of Burgundy, and two knights of consideration, presented themselves before him on behalf of the King of France.  “They were dissolved in tears,” says he, “in such sort they could not utter a single word; and, seeing them so moved, those present wept in their turn for pity’s sake.  ’Weep not,’ said King Richard to them; ’I know what ye be come to ask; your lord, the King of France, desireth to go home again, and ye be come in his name to ask on his behalf my counsel and leave to get him gone.’  ‘It is true, sir; you know all,’ answered the messengers; ’our king sayeth, that if he depart not speedily from this land, he will surely die.’  ‘It will be for him and for the kingdom of France,’ replied King Richard, ’eternal shame, if he go home without fulfilling the work for the which he came, and he shall not go hence by my advice; but if he must die or return home, let him do what he will, and what may appear to him expedient for him, for him and his.’” The source from which this story comes, and the tone of it, are enough to take from it all authority; for it is the custom of monastic chroniclers to attribute to political or military characters emotions and demonstrations alien to their position and their times.  Philip Augustus, moreover, was one of the most decided, most