Deputies were speedily sent to the Pope Eugenius, who willingly abetted in the king's design, and commissioned the famous St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, to preach the Cross through France and Germany. St. Bernard possessed every requisite for such a mission.[557] From his earliest years he had been filled with religious enthusiasm; he had abandoned high prospects to dedicate himself entirely to an austere and gloomy fanaticism; he had reformed many abuses in the church, reproved crime wherever he found it, and raised the clerical character in the eyes of the people, too much accustomed to behold among his order nothing but vice, ignorance, and indolence. He was one of the most powerful orators of his day, endowed with high and commanding talents of many kinds; and in his controversy with the celebrated Abelard, the severe purity of his life and manners had proved most eloquent against his rival. Thus, when after repeated entreaties[558] he went forth to preach the crusade, few that heard him were not either impressed by his sanctity, persuaded by his eloquence, or carried away by his zeal: and thus, notwithstanding the unfavourable state of France,[559] a multitude of men took the symbol of the Cross, and prepared to follow the monarch into Palestine. In Germany the effects of his overpowering oratory were the same. Those who understood not even the language that he spoke, became awed by his gestures and the dignified enthusiasm of his manner, and devoted themselves to the crusade, though the tongue in which it was preached was unknown to them. Wherever he went his presence was supposed to operate miracles, and the sick are reported to have recovered by his touch, or at his command; while all the legions of devils, with which popish superstition peopled the atmosphere, took flight at his approach. For some time Conrad, Emperor of Germany, suffered[560] St. Bernard to call the inhabitants of his dominions to the crusade without taking any active part in his proceedings, but at length the startling eloquence of the Abbot of Clairvaux reached even the bosom of the monarch, and he declared his intention of following the Cross himself. At Vezelai Louis VII. received the symbol: but the most powerful obstacle that he found to his undertaking was the just and continued opposition of his minister,[561] Suger, who endeavoured by every means to dissuade the monarch from abandoning his kingdom. All persuasions were vain; and having committed the care of his estates to that faithful servant,[562] Louis himself, accompanied by Eleonor, his queen, departed for Metz, where he was joined by an immense multitude of nobles and knights, among whom were crusaders from England[563] and the remote islands of the northern sea. Ambassadors from Roger, King of Apulia, had already warned Louis of the treachery of the Greeks, and besought him to take any other way than that through the dominions of the emperor; but the French monarch was biassed by other