and Pope Clement iv. gave the king nothing but ambiguous and very reserved counsel.  When he learned that Louis was taking with him on the crusade three of his sons, aged respectively twenty-two, eighteen, and seventeen, he could not refrain from writing to the Cardinal of St. Cecile, “It doth not strike us as an act of well-balanced judgment to impose the taking of the cross upon so many of the king’s sons, and especially the eldest; and, albeit we have heard reasons to the contrary, either we be much mistaken or they are utterly devoid of reason.”  Even the king’s personal condition was matter for grave anxiety.  His health was very much enfeebled; and several of his most intimate and most far-seeing advisers were openly opposed to his design.  He vehemently urged Joinville to take the cross again with him; but Joinville refused downright.  “I thought,” said he, “that they all committed a mortal sin to advise him the voyage, because the whole kingdom was in fair peace at home and with all neighbors, and, so soon as he departed, the state of the kingdom did nought but worsen.  They also committed a great sin to advise him the voyage in the great state of weakness in which his body was, for he could not bear to go by chariot or to ride; he was so weak that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from the hotel of the Count of Auxerre, the place where I took leave of him, to the Cordeliers.  And nevertheless, weak as he was, had he remained in France, he might have lived yet a while and wrought much good.”

All objections, all warnings, all anxieties came to nothing in the face of Louis’s fixed idea and pious passion.  He started from Paris on the 16th of March, 1270, a sick man almost already, but with soul content, and probably the only one without misgiving in the midst of all his comrades.  It was once more at Aigues-Mortes that he went to embark.  All was as yet dark and undecided as to the plan of the expedition.  Was Egypt, or Palestine, or Constantinople, or Tunis, to be the first point of attack?  Negotiations, touching this subject, had been opened with the Venetians and the Genoese without arriving at any conclusion or certainty.  Steps were taken at haphazard with full trust in Providence and utter forgetfulness that Providence does not absolve men from foresight.  On arriving at Aigues-Mortes about the middle of May, Louis found nothing organized, nothing in readiness, neither crusaders nor vessels; everything was done slowly, incompletely, and with the greatest irregularity.  At last, on the 2d of July, 1270, he set sail without any one’s knowing and without the king’s telling any one whither they were going.  It was only in Sardinia, after four days’ halt at Cagliari, that Louis announced to the chiefs of the crusade, assembled aboard his ship the Mountjoy, that he was making for Tunis, and that their Christian work would commence there.  The King of Tunis (as he was then called), Mohammed Mostanser, had for some time been talking of his desire to become a Christian, if he could be efficiently protected against the seditions of his subjects.  Louis welcomed with transport the prospect of Mussulman conversions.  “Ah!” he cried, “if I could only see myself the gossip and sponsor of so great a godson!”