The period fixed upon for the departure of the expedition was drawing near.  By order of the legate, the cures in every parish had taken the names of the crusaders, in order to oblige them to wear the cross publicly, and all had notice to hold themselves in readiness to embark in the month of May, 1270.  Louis confided the administration of his kingdom, during his absence, to Matthew, Abbot of St. Denis, and to Simon, Sieur de Nesle; he wrote to all the nobles who were to follow him into the Holy Land, to recommend them to assemble their knights and men-at-arms.  As religious enthusiasm was not sufficiently strong to make men forget their worldly interests, many nobles who had taken the cross entertained great fears of being ruined by the holy war, and most of them hesitated to set out.  Louis undertook to pay all the expenses of their voyage, and to maintain them at his own cost during the war—­a thing that had not been done in the crusades of Louis VII or Philip Augustus, in which the ardor of the crusaders did not allow them to give a thought to their fortunes or to exercise so much foresight.  We have still a valuable monument of this epoch in a charter, by which the King of France stipulates how much he is to pay to a great number of barons and knights during the time the war beyond the seas should last.

Early in the month of March, Louis repaired to the Church of St. Denis, where he received the symbols of the pilgrimage and placed his kingdom under the protection of the apostles of France.  Upon the day following this solemn ceremony, a mass for the crusade was celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris.  The monarch appeared there, accompanied by his children and the principal nobles of his court; he walked from the palace barefooted, carrying his scrip and staff.  The same day he went to sleep at Vincennes, and beheld, for the last time, the spot on which he had enjoyed so much happiness in administering justice to his people.  And it was here too that he took leave of Queen Marguerite, whom he had never before quitted—­a separation rendered so much the more painful by the sorrowful reflection it recalled of past events and by melancholy presentiments for the future.

Both the people and the court were affected by the deepest regret; and that which added to the public anxiety was the circumstance that everyone was ignorant of the point to which the expedition was to be directed:  the coast of Africa was only vaguely conjectured.  The King of Sicily had taken the cross without having the least inclination to embark for Asia; and when the question was discussed in council he gave it as his opinion that Tunis should be the object of the first attack.  The kingdom of Tunis covered the seas with pirates, who infested all the routes to Palestine; it was, besides, the ally of Egypt, and might, if subdued, be made the readiest road to that country.  These were the ostensible reasons put forth; the true ones were that it was of importance