As to the interviews between Francis and the sultan, it is prudent to keep to the narratives of Jacques de Vitry and William of Tyre.[25] Although the latter wrote at a comparatively late date (between 1275 and 1295), he followed a truly historic method, and founded his work on authentic documents; we see that he knows no more than Jacques de Vitry of the proposal said to have been made by Francis to pass through a fire if the priests of Mahomet would do as much, intending so to establish the superiority of Christianity. We know how little such an appeal to signs is characteristic of St. Francis. Perhaps the story, which comes from Bonaventura, is born of a misconception. The sultan, like a new Pharaoh, may have laid it upon the strange preacher to prove his mission by miracles. However this may be, Francis and his companions were treated with great consideration, a fact the more meritorious that hostilities were then at their height. Returned to the Crusading camp, they remained there until after the taking of Damietta (November 5, 1219). This time the Christians were victorious, but perhaps the heart of the _gospel man_ bled more for this victory than for the defeat of August 29th. The shocking condition of the city, which the victors found piled with heaps of dead bodies, the quarrels over the sharing of booty, the sale of the wretched creatures who had not succumbed to the pestilence,[26] all these scenes of terror, cruelty, greed, caused him profound horror. The "human beast" was let loose, the apostle's voice could no more make itself heard in the midst of the savage clamor than that of a life-saver over a raging ocean. He set out for Syria[27] and the Holy Places. How gladly would we follow him in this pilgrimage, accompany him in thought through Judea and Galilee, to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Gethsemane! What was said to him by the stable where the Son of Mary was born, the workshop where he toiled, the olive-tree where he accepted the bitter cup? Alas! the documents here suddenly fail us. Setting out from Damietta very shortly after the siege (November 5, 1219) he may easily have been at Bethlehem by Christmas. But we know nothing, absolutely nothing, except that his sojourn was more prolonged than had been expected. Some of the Brothers who were present at Portiuncula at the chapter-general of 1220 (Whitsunday, May 17th) had time enough to go to Syria and still find Francis there;[28] they could hardly have arrived much earlier than the end of June. What had he been doing those eight months? Why had he not gone home to preside at the chapter? Had he been ill?[29] Had he been belated by some mission? Our information is too slight to permit us even to venture upon conjecture. Angelo Clareno relates that the Sultan of Egypt, touched by his preaching, gave command that he and all his friars should have free access to the Holy Sepulchre without the payment of any tribute.[30]