Immediately each knight drew his sword, and presenting its gleaming point against the now defenceless D'Essai, crowded him down the steps to the altar, where the pursuivants seized him, and forced him into his coffin, and placed him on the bier, and the attendant priests completed the burial-service over his polluted name and perjured soul. At a sign from the king, the bearers took up the bier, and all the vast congregation followed in sad procession, to the city-gates, where they thrust him out, a thing accursed, while the great bell from the lofty tower of the cathedral told the tale of his infamy in tones of terrible significance, "Gone--gone--gone--virtue, faith, and truth; lost--lost--lost--honor, fame, and love." From Carmel's hoary height to Tabor's sacred top, each hallowed hill and vale reverberated the awful knell, "Gone and lost--lost and gone"--and the breeze that swept the plain of Esdraelon caught up the dismal echo, and seemed hurrying across the Mediterranean to whisper to the chivalry of Europe the dreadful story of his _degradation_. Stung by the weight of woe that had fallen upon him, the miserable D'Essai rose and gazed across the plain. An arid waste spread out before him like the prospect of his own dreary future, blackened and desolate by the reign of evil passions. Life, what had it been to him? A feverish dream, a burning thirst, a restless, unsatisfied desire! Virtue--honor--truth--idle words, their solemn mockery yet rang in his ears. He ran--he flew--anywhere, anywhere to flee the haunting thoughts that trooped like fiends upon his track. He neared the banks of the river, its cooling waters rolling on in their eternal channel, promised to allay his fever and bury his dishonored name in oblivion. He plunged in--that ancient river swept him away, the river Kishon, and as he sank to rise no more, a deep voice exclaimed, "So perish thine enemies, O Lord!" It was the voice of Dermot de la Clare, who, passing southward at the head of his troop, from the opposite bank became an involuntary witness of the frantic suicide. The week following the ceremony last described, Eva entered the apartment of Eleanora, each fair feature radiant with pleasure, bearing in her hand a carrier-pigeon, whose fluttering heart betokened the weary length of way that had tried the strength of its glossy pinions. "Whence hast thou the dove, and what is his errand?" exclaimed the princess, equally eager for any intelligence that might affect the fate of the East. "A Pullani brought it to the palace," she replied, and hastily cutting the silken thread, she detached a letter from beneath the wing of the bird. It contained but these words: "The Sultan of Egypt is hard pressed by the Moslems. It is a favorable moment to commence negotiations."