One last resource remained to the Toulousain, to throw himself on the mercy of the legates and the Pope. While he had been running after Philip Augustus and Otto, his agents had been dealing with the papal curia, under instructions to raise the question of the personality of Arnaut Amalric. Should another legate, less hard and pitiless, be sent, then Raymond authorized them to promise complete submission. While Raymond’s ambassadors were framing these promises (no doubt in the full-blown oratory characteristic of the meridional to this day), laying the blame for what had occurred upon Arnaut Amalric, and showering rich presents upon all who might be useful to them, Raymond himself was giving away the game by throwing himself on the mercy of the man he professed to be unwilling to deal with on any terms. Hearing that Arnaut Amalric was holding a council at Aubinas, he knelt at Arnaut’s feet, and begged for mercy and pardon. As might have been expected, he gained nothing, the abbot coldly referred him to Rome. The effect of the fruitless humiliation was only to strain still further his relations with his nephew, and to lower still further, if possible, Churchmen’s opinion of his crooked dealings with them. Innocent determined to play with the wretched count. Excommunicate as he was, the fact that his agents had been received at Rome and their complaints against Arnaut listened to at all may prove that the Pope and his advisers had already considered such a plan. Certainly Raymond’s repeated shuffling with the Church had been enough to wipe out any further claim to consideration for him. His abject fear was now to be used to put him into the power of Rome, so as to lessen his ability to resist the coming Crusade, should he determine to do so. As for renouncing the Crusade, whatever Raymond might do, that was probably not considered for a moment. After ten years of failure Rome was at last convinced that nothing could be done with heresy in Languedoc except by terrifying that country. Further, now that the crusading army was actually mobilizing, the Church could not call off the expedition even if she so desired. Accordingly, the curia fell in with Raymond’s request for new legates. Without removing Arnaut Amalric, the Pope gave him two new colleagues—Milo, a notary of the Lateran, and Theodisius, a Genoese canon—who were to arrange the conditions of the Count’s reconciliation with the Church. Raymond was overjoyed, and there are indications that Arnaut Amalric and his colleague the bishop of Conserans were correspondingly depressed, or at least puzzled at the apparent success of the Toulousain ambassadors at Rome, with their fluent tongues and their showers of presents.