As she passed through the provinces of France her attention was attracted by groups of children, habited as pilgrims with scrip and staff, gathered about the doors of churches, repeating pious ascriptions of praise or tuning their infant voices to sacred hymns. Her curiosity was strongly excited, and she questioned them concerning the motives that influenced to so strange a proceeding. "Fair Solyma lies in ruins," replied the little fanatics, "and it may please God who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hath ordained strength, to redeem it by our feeble hands." These scenes occurred daily upon her route. In vain the queen employed argument and entreaty, threats and promises to induce them to return to their homes. They followed in the train of a company of monks who, with the diabolical design of profiting by a crime then too common, were working upon their superstitious hopes and fears to decoy them to the sea-coast, where they might be shipped to Egypt and sold as slaves. Thirty thousand misguided innocents were thus collected from Italy and Germany, and most of them fell a sacrifice to the mercenary motives of those who traded in the bodies and souls of men. When Isabella arrived at Angoulême, the valiant Lusignan was absent from his territories, fighting under the banners of the cross, and her maternal heart was allowed the solace of frequent intercourse with Joanna, the little bride of her former lover. CHAPTER IV. "I'll hang my harp on the willow-tree, And off to the wars again; My peaceful home has no charms for me, The battle-field no pain." Convinced by the crusade of the children that the spirit which had moved the former expeditions to the Holy Land was still active in Europe, Pope Innocent exclaiming, "While we sleep these children are awake," determined once more to arm the Christian world against the Moslem. The commands of the Vatican calling upon men to exterminate the Infidel were hurled upon every part of Europe. In a circular letter to sovereigns and clergy the pope declared that the time had at last arrived when the most happy results might be expected from a confederation of the Christian powers. Count la Marche was among the first to hear and obey the mandate of the spiritual head. With the Duke of Nevers he commanded the French croises that in 1215 sailed for Egypt, where he was actively engaged in the Holy warfare when Isabella visited Valence. The siege of Damietta was carried on with the usual atrocities. Tidings of the death of Saphadin weakened the forces of the garrison, and Camel, younger son of Elsiebede, lord of the fertile country of the Nile, was compelled to seek refuge in Arabia. The first success of the crusaders was followed by disaster and discord; and when after a siege of seventeen months Damietta was taken, they found in pestilence and famine more terrible foes than in the sixty thousand Moslems that had perished beneath their swords.