[Sidenote: Religious Attitude of Knights] Conon, like every other knight, has no temptation to unbelief. The doctors of the Church know all about religion, just as the king's falconers know all about hawking. It is sensible to trust the expert. If you ask idle questions, you merely risk your soul, as do the followers of Mahound, the false prophet. The baron frequently denounces the arrogance and covetousness of the clergy and resists their pretentions, but he nevertheless trusts them to supply him with the Sacraments and bless his death and burial so that his soul may pass promptly through purgatory into paradise--where existence presumably is one grand admixture of a marriage feast in a fine garden and of a magnificent tournament. Plenty of knights are lax and blasphemous, but they hardly are deliberately unbelieving.[84] Good knights ought to hear mass every morning; venerate holy objects and places; hate Jews and Saracens; worship the Virgin and the saints; also keep most of the major fasts and other special occasions of the Church. Conon does all these things. He is "a good Christian." But he is exempted from any serious thinking for himself upon mysterious matters. [Illustration: A GROUP OF PRIESTS, THIRTEENTH CENTURY The one who is near the altar is wearing a chasuble and the second and third are clad in the dalmatica, or deacon's gown. The second carries the consecrated wafer and the third a sort of fan. (From a manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale.)] When Conon prays in the morning, if not hurried he lies down with his head turned toward the east, and his arms stretched out like a cross. He recites the favors which God has shown him in the past, beseeches Heaven to continue favorable. Often he adds a Credo and a certain paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer then very common--"Our Father, who desirest that we all be saved, grant that we acquire Thy love even as have the angels who do thy pleasure on high; and give us our daily bread--for the soul the Holy Sacrament, and for the body its needful sustenance." Yet if his mood is not unusually humble and contrite, he is likely to conclude patronizingly, "And I confide also in the strength of my heart, which thou hast bestowed, in my good sword and my fleet horse, yet especially in Thee!" Many a cavalier breaks into blasphemies when things go wrong. Such men are like William Rufus of England, who cried, "God shall never see me a good man--I have suffered too much at His hands!" Or Henry II, who, on learning that his son Henry had revolted, cried aloud, "Since Thou, O God, hast taken away from me that which I prized the most, Thou shalt not have what Thou prizest most in me--my soul." And even Conon, once when hard beset, had exclaimed, like a certain crusading lord: "What king, O Lord, ever deserted thus his men? Who _now_ will trust in or fight for thee?"