The romantic purpose of becoming a female crusader now completely occupied the light head of Eleanor, and as she was in the very plenitude of her charms, and possessed sufficient wealth to practise any extravagance, she soon made it the fashion among all the vain sentimentalists of her court. The absurd arrangements which she made for the campaign, gave little promise of rational conquest. The female recruits sent their useless distaffs and embroidery-frames to all the knights and nobles who had the good sense to suppose that Heaven would be better pleased with their remaining in peace at home, than by their going abroad to destroy their fellow-men; and this ingenious taunt had the desired effect upon the doughty knights, who, fearing a woman's raillery, joined an expedition to Syria to prove their valor. The fair warriors clothed themselves in helmet and hauberk, having golden crosses tastefully embroidered upon the left shoulder; gilded slippers, glittering spurs, and silver-sheathed falchions suspended from the side completed the equipment, and mounted on richly-caparisoned steeds, they formed a brilliant squadron, caricoled about Paris and performed a thousand fantastic follies in public, calling themselves the body-guard of the _Golden-footed Dame_. CHAPTER III. A voice, a flute, a dreamy lay, Such as the southern breeze Might waft, at golden fall of day O'er blue transparent seas. Louis took the cross in 1146, and in the following year, having received from the pope the consecrated banner as a warrior, and the staff and scrip as a pilgrim, set out for the general rendezvous at Mentz with his queen and her grotesque cavalcade. Here they were joined by an immense number of nobles and knights and soldiers, among whom were crusaders from England and the remote islands of the northern sea. After the lapse of half a century, the second crusade, consisting of two hundred thousand people, tracked their way along the banks of the Danube by the whitening bones of those who had fallen victims to the blind fanaticism of the first expedition. Manuel Comnenus, who now sat on the throne of Constantinople, adopted the same policy that had distinguished the councils of his grandfather, Alexius. His envoys, bearing letters filled with flattery and fair speeches, met the advancing warriors, but the imperial guides were instructed to conduct the soldiers of the west by difficult and circuitous routes, and the purveyors had secret orders to furnish them with sacks of flour mixed with chalk and lime. Conrad, who was the brother-in-law of Manuel, was so indignant at this breach of hospitality, that he crossed the Bosphorus without meeting or conferring with the emperor--but the splendid city of Constantinople presented too many attractions to the female adventurers to be passed in so hurried a manner.