"In single encounter or in a fair field," replied Stephen, "the croises are uniformly victorious: but valor wields no weapon against famine and disease. Our army, at such a distance from their own land, must be dependent for supplies upon the grace of Alexius, each victory, therefore, but lays the foundation for another contest, and were Palestine delivered from the Turk, it would require still greater exertion, to wrest it from the Greek." The countess was silenced by reasoning which she could not answer, but against which all her feelings revolted. Yet though she apparently acquiesced in her husband's decision, her heart was keenly alive to every rumor that might reflect upon his fame. Nor were her feelings soothed, by hearing that the pilgrims besieged in Antioch, enfeebled by disease and wasted by famine, reproached Count Stephen, as the cause of all their miseries; since he had withdrawn his own forces, not only, but turned back the armies that were hastening to their relief. Her pride and ambition were deeply wounded by these reports, and when she learned that the Christians, at the very point to die of starvation, had bound themselves never to abandon the cause, till they had pressed their lips upon the Holy Sepulchre; that visions of saints and apostles, had reawakened energy and activity in their wasted ranks, that the lance that pierced the side of the Saviour, had been discovered and that a "bright squadron of celestial allies," had closed in with the battalions of the christian army and pursued the Saracen legions from the vale of the Orontes, she felt that her husband had not only tamely resigned an earthly crown, but had by the same cowardly act forfeited an heavenly inheritance. In the agony of her disappointment and chagrin, she vowed she would give him no rest till he returned to the Holy Land, to wipe out with his blood if need be, the foul stain upon his honor.