Villani relates a mournful scene--the ominous interview between pope and king in the forest of St. Jean d’Angély where one sold his tiara and the other bought it. This meeting did not take place, but conditions were certainly proposed and accepted. One of them was nothing less than the destruction of the military order of the Templars. The wealth of these warrior monks, now of no use to them since it was no longer expended in armament against the infidel, had tempted the king’s greed, always keen-scented for money, and their powers stood in the way of his despotism. There were 15,500 knights with a great multitude of servant knights, brothers and their dependents, so that if gathered together they could defy all the royal armies of Europe; and their strong organisation, under the hand of the grand-master, made them seem more formidable than did their numbers and their wealth. They possessed throughout Christendom more than ten thousand establishments, and a number of fortresses, among them the temple at Paris where Philip had once found a safe asylum from a riot which stormed and raged in vain around its thick walls. In the treasury of the order there were 150,000 gold florins not counting silver or precious vessels. The world never knew what went on in their houses. Everything was secret, but there were vague rumours of orgies, scandals, and impieties, and no profane eye had ever penetrated the mysteries. Knights had disappeared, because, it was said, they had threatened compromising revelations. The pride of the order irritated the people, who charged it with the most odious crimes; but they were guilty only of great laxity of morals, and their religious ceremonies were perhaps mingled in the East with some impure alloy and strange customs. [Illustration: A TEMPLAR]