But new warriors were excited to redeem the opportunity. France and England sent much of their best blood and many of their most famous names. Among the multitude of celebrities was one who was destined to bring the entire crusade to a fatal ending. Cardinal Pelagius was delegated as papal legate. He was a man of arrogance, and asserted his right to supersede even John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem, in the military command. This position was refused him by the soldiery. He at length accomplished his ambition by threatening all who opposed him with excommunication. The coming of these auxiliaries spurred the Christians to take advantage of contentions among the Moslems and make a forward movement. They crossed from the west bank of the Nile and invested Damietta. The menace reunited the Infidels. Battles were of daily occurrence, in which whole battalions, now of Christians, now of Moslems, were driven into the Nile, and perished. One beautiful episode redeemed these hellish scenes. St. Francis of Assisi visited the camps; he went among his brethren with consolations for the sick and wounded, his presence redolent with heavenly charity. No labors could weary this man, who already seemed divested largely of his physical nature, and to be sustained only by the power of his inward spirit. His zeal for God led him to visit even the camp of the Moslems. He preached his doctrines before Malek-Kamel, the Sultan of Cairo; he alternately threatened the sultan’s infidelity with the pains of hell, and sought to win his better faith by promises of heaven. Francis proposed to test the truth of either religion by passing with the holiest Moslems through an ordeal of fire. This being declined, he offered himself to the flame, provided that the sultan’s conversion should follow the refusal of fire to burn the representative of the faith of Christ. With courteous words the test was declined. Moslems reverenced insane persons as in some way under a divine influence; Malek-Kamel treated his uninvited guest as one of this sort. The Moslem doctors of the law commanded Malek-Kamel to take off the head of the intruder, but the warrior was either too much amused with the simplicity, or too much amazed at the sincerity, of his visitor to harm him, and dismissed him with presents, which, however, Francis’ vow of poverty would not allow him to accept. Whether persuaded by the holy eloquence of the saint, or by the rumor that Frederick of Germany was approaching with fresh armies, the sultan proposed peace. He offered the flattering condition of giving up Jerusalem to the Christians. The warriors would have assented thus to secure as the reward of their valor that which had been the object of the entire crusade; but Cardinal Pelagius forbade, in the name of the Holy Father, the cessation of arms at any less price than the entire subjugation of the Moslem power.