Of this little body of captains Fernand Ximenes owned indubitably the ablest mind, as he owned no less indubitably the strongest body. Of a smooth and grave exterior, with something of an ecclesiastic suavity blended with the urbanity of a scholar, this outward serenity masked a spirit as ingenious in forming schemes for self-aggrandizement as relentless in their execution. Greatly gifted as a practical soldier, greatly gifted as a possible statesman, Ximenes was most graced of all in this, that he knew how to wait. He was never in a hurry; he had never been known in a life that had now well come to middle age to speak a word there was no need to speak or strike a stroke there was no need to strike. His ambition was unlimited, but he never allowed it to lead him farther than he could safely see his clear way, and he had often let some apparently bright occasion go by when to his shrewd eyes the brightness seemed fallacious. He loved all desirable things--women, kingdoms, gold, images, pictures, jewels, costly habits, costly fare. He even--and this seemed a strange thing in a leader of the Catalan Grand Company--was not indifferent to books. But he could deny himself as vigorously as the most rigid ascetic to any of these fleshly temptations if his crafty mind were convinced that the denial of a moment meant a fuller gratification later, and he had never yet found that such wise denial had gone unrewarded. It was through the influence and advice of Ximenes--so subtly exercised and so subtly offered that it seemed to each of his colleagues as if the course of action resolved upon had been decided as a result of his individual will--that the Catalan Grand Company entered into the service of Duke Baldwin of Athens. There were some, indeed, in the little cluster of captains who had talked none too vaguely of the possibility of the Grand Company making itself the master rather than the servant of the Duke of Athens. But with infinite patience and with infinite pains Fernand Ximenes made it plain to his co-captains that they had not at their command anything approaching to the necessary strength that would entitle them to enter upon a struggle with a fairly powerful prince of Greece, who had at his command a following little inferior to their own. "So long as we are well paid," he pleaded, "we shall do very well in Attica. The duke is generous; the duke is a free liver. He will be courteous to us captains, and our comrades will grow fat. The women of Greece are fair, if less radiant than the women of Spain, and the wines of Greece are very cheerful drinking." With these and other arguments he succeeded in carrying his point, and the forces of the Catalan Grand Company pledged their allegiance to Duke Baldwin in return for the stipulated sum.