On the twenty-third day of March, the great parliament of the kingdom being assembled in a hall of the Louvre, the king entered, bearing in his hand the crown of thorns of Christ. At sight of this, the whole assembly became aware of the monarch’s intentions. Louis, in a speech delivered with great animation, described the misfortunes of the Holy Land, and proclaimed that he was resolved to go and succour it; he then exhorted all who heard him to take the cross. When he ceased to speak, a sad but a profound silence expressed at once the surprise and grief of the barons and prelates, with the respect that all entertained for the will of the holy monarch. Cardinal de St. Cecilia, the pope’s legate, spoke after him, and in a pathetic exhortation, called upon the French warriors to take arms. Louis received the cross from the hands of the cardinal, and his example was followed by three of his sons. Among these princes, the assembly was affected at beholding John, count of Nevers, who was born at Damietta amidst the calamities of the preceding crusade. At the same time the legate received the oath of John, count of Brittany, of Alphonso de Brienne, count of Eu, of Marguerite, the ancient countess of Flanders, and of a great number of prelates, nobles, and knights. The determination of St. Louis, of which a sad presentiment had been entertained, spread deep regret throughout his kingdom; his people could not behold without sorrow the departure of a prince whose presence alone preserved peace, and maintained order and justice everywhere. The health of the king was very much weakened, and there was great reason to fear that he would not be able to support the dangers and fatigues of a crusade; he took his sons with him; which circumstance added greatly to the public grief. The disasters of the first crusade were still fresh in the memory of his subjects, and whilst they thought of the captivity of the whole of the royal family, they dreaded greater misfortunes in the future. Joinville does not fear to say, “that they who had advised the king to undertake this voyage beyond the seas, had sinned mortally.” Notwithstanding the general regret, there were neither complaints nor murmurs against the king; the spirit of resignation, which was one of the virtues of the monarch, appeared to have passed into the minds of all his subjects, and, to employ the very expressions of the pope’s bull, “the French people saw in the devotion of their king nothing but a noble and painful sacrifice to the cause of the Christians, to that cause for which God had not spared his only Son.” The greater that was the affection for the king, the greater was the general grief; but the zeal to partake his perils more than kept pace with these.[22] Louis alone thought of delivering the tomb of Christ and the Christian colonies; the warlike nobility of the kingdom only thought of following their king in an expedition which was already looked upon as unfortunate.