it disdain their company.  So it is, that to this very purpose the Sire de Joinville, as credible a witness as any other whatever, tells us of the Bedouins, a nation amongst the Saracens, with whom the king St. Louis had to do in the Holy Land, that they, in their religion, so firmly believed the number of every man’s days to be from all eternity prefixed and set down by an inevitable decree, that they went naked to the wars, excepting a Turkish sword, and their bodies only covered with a white linen cloth:  and for the greatest curse they could invent when they were angry, this was always in their mouths:  “Accursed be thou, as he that arms himself for fear of death.”  This is a testimony of faith very much beyond ours.  And of this sort is that also that two friars of Florence gave in our fathers’ days.  Being engaged in some controversy of learning, they agreed to go both of them into the fire in the sight of all the people, each for the verification of his argument, and all things were already prepared, and the thing just upon the point of execution, when it was interrupted by an unexpected accident.—­[7th April 1498.  Savonarola issued the challenge.  After many delays from demands and counter-demands by each side as to the details of the fire, both parties found that they had important business to transact in another county—­both just barely escaped assassination at the hands of the disappointed spectators.  D.W.]

A young Turkish lord, having performed a notable exploit in his own person in the sight of both armies, that of Amurath and that of Huniades, ready to join battle, being asked by Amurath, what in such tender and inexperienced years (for it was his first sally into arms) had inspired him with so brave a courage, replied, that his chief tutor for valour was a hare.  “For being,” said he, “one day a hunting, I found a hare sitting, and though I had a brace of excellent greyhounds with me, yet methought it would be best for sureness to make use of my bow; for she sat very fair.  I then fell to letting fly my arrows, and shot forty that I had in my quiver, not only without hurting, but without starting her from her form.  At last I slipped my dogs after her, but to no more purpose than I had shot:  by which I understood that she had been secured by her destiny; and, that neither darts nor swords can wound without the permission of fate, which we can neither hasten nor defer.”  This story may serve, by the way, to let us see how flexible our reason is to all sorts of images.

A person of great years, name, dignity, and learning boasted to me that he had been induced to a certain very important change in his faith by a strange and whimsical incitation, and one otherwise so inadequate, that I thought it much stronger, taken the contrary way:  he called it a miracle, and so I look upon it, but in a different sense.  The Turkish historians say, that the persuasion those of their nation have imprinted in them of the fatal and unalterable prescription of their days, manifestly conduces to the giving them great assurance in dangers.  And I know a great prince who makes very fortunate use of it, whether it be that he really believes it, or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself:  let us hope Fortune may not be too soon weary of her favour to him.