To the sanguine enthusiasm of the Christians the city seemed like a ripened fruit ready to fall into the hand at a touch. Guards appeared upon the walls, but the challenge of their camps provoked no response. This the Christians interpreted as a sign of the feebleness and dismay of the garrison. They were disposed to wait for the fruit to fall of itself. The genial influence of the climate soon wrought its softness into nerve and spirit. Discipline was relaxed; knights whose shields showed many a dent of conflict spent the hours among the vineyards, where the luscious clusters still hung upon their stems. Adventure found its pastime in discovering the vaults in which the peasants had hidden their grain. If we could believe the theory that good and evil people leave in the places they frequent an atmosphere of virtue or vice, to invigorate or infect the souls of those who come after them, we might think that the soldiers of the cross had succumbed to the influence of the votaries of Venus and Adonis, who anciently revelled in the grove of Daphne; for the Christian host became infatuated with unseemly pleasures; they were given over to intemperance and debauchery. An arch-deacon was not ashamed to be seen in dalliance with a Syrian nymph. If the leaders did not yield to the prevalent vice, they seem to have been infected with that intellectual dulness and lethargy of purpose which follows license. They neglected to prepare their siege machinery, and when a momentary enthusiasm led them to attack the walls they paid for their temerity with failure. The enemy became correspondingly emboldened, and retaliated with fearful forays through the Christian lines. With the approach of winter the crusaders had exhausted their provisions, and the country about furnished no more. Heavy rainfalls reduced their camps to swamps, in which the bow lost its stiffness, and the body its vigor, making the men the prey of diseases which kept them busy burying their dead. Stories of disasters to the cause elsewhere floated to them, until the air seemed laden with evil omens. Sweno, Prince of Denmark, had advanced through Cappadocia. At his side was Florine, daughter of Count Eudes of Burgundy, his affianced bride. Together they fought their way through countless swarms of Turks, until, with all their attendant knights, they were slain. The body of this heroic woman showed that seven arrows had penetrated her armor. News also came that fleets of Pisans and Genoese, their allies, had withdrawn from the coast, lured by better prospects of gain than in bringing succor to what seemed a ruined cause.