Meanwhile Richard had, immediately on his return to Joppa, renewed his friendly intercourse with Safadin by sending him a beautiful horse as a present. A few days later an envoy from Safadin came, by the king’s desire, to meet him at Yazour, some four miles, from Joppa on the road to Ramlah, to receive his proposals for a treaty. Of these proposals the Moslem envoy carried back two sets, one for direct transmission to the Sultan, the other intended primarily for Safadin’s personal consideration. To Saladin the king wrote that, with Franks and Moslems alike perishing and the country ruined, the war had gone far enough; the only matters in dispute were the Holy City, the Cross, and the limits of the two realms, Christian and Mussulman. Their claim to Jerusalem, as the most sacred seat of their Faith, the Christians could not renounce so long as there was one man of them left alive. Of the country they claimed restitution up to the western bank of the Jordan. As for the Cross, “seeing that to the Moslems it is but a piece of wood,” Saladin might well give it back to those who accounted it a sacred treasure; and thus should there be for both parties peace and rest from their labours. Saladin at once decisively refused all three conditions.[812] To Safadin the king had proposed another scheme: that Safadin should take Queen Joan of Sicily to wife, and reign over the land jointly with her, she holding Jerusalem as her royal seat, Richard endowing her with Acre, Joppa, and Ascalon (which he accounted his own conquests), the Sultan [Sidenote: c. _Oct. 18_] giving the Holy Cross to the Christians, and all the places which he held in the Sahel or Maritime Plain to his brother and declaring him king of the land. With these terms Safadin appeared well pleased, and Saladin, when they were laid before him, answered immediately and emphatically, “Yes! yes! yes!”—“being,” says Bohadin who was present and who knew him well enough to read his thoughts, “persuaded that the king would never really sanction such a thing, and proposed it only in trickery and play.” His persuasion was justified; when on October 23 an envoy from the Sultan and his brother again came to the Christian camp, he was sent back with a message that when the king had told his sister of the marriage proposed for her, she had become “furious with indignation and wrath,” and sworn by all she held sacred that she would never submit to it; whereupon her brother had promised to bring, if he could, Safadin to accept Christianity. All this was of course mere diplomacy to wile away the time till the host was ready for a further advance; and on the 27th Saladin received [Sidenote: _Oct. 28_] tidings that the enemy was preparing to leave Joppa. Next day the Sultan returned to Ramlah. On the 29th he sent some troops to surprise the Christian camp, but they were driven off and put to flight.[813] On the 30th Richard, “wandering about in the plain towards Ramlah,” espied a