The time had arrived when further concealment was impracticable. The captive stood before the commander of the crusading force; and the rules of war, no less than the usages of that chivalrous courtesy practised alike by the warriors of the West and their oriental foemen, required that he should remove the vizor which still concealed his features. Still, however, he stood motionless, with his arms folded across his breast, resembling rather the empty panoply which adorns some hero’s monument than a being instinct with life, and agitated by all the passions to which the mortal heart is liable. Words were addressed to him in the lingua-Franca, or mixed language, which had obtained during those frequent intervals of truce which characterized the nature of the holy wars--breaking into the bloody gloom of strife as an occasional ray of sunshine illuminates the day of storm and darkness--but no effect was produced by their sound on the proud or perhaps uncomprehending prisoner. For a moment, their former terrors, which had vanished on the fall of their dreaded opponent, appeared to have regained their ascendency over the superstitious hearts of the unenlightened warriors: many there were who confidently expected that the removal of the iron mask would disclose the swart and thunder-stricken brow, the fiery glance, and the infernal aspect, of the prince of darkness! No resistance was offered when the chamberlain of Guy de Lusignan stepped forward, and with all courtesy unlaced the fastenings of the casque and gorget. The clasps gave way, and scarcely could a deeper consternation or a more manifest astonishment have fallen upon the beholders had the king of terrors himself glared forth in awful revelation from that iron panoply. It was no dark-complexioned Saracen-- “In shadowed livery of the burnished sun,” with whiskered lip and aquiline features, who struck such a chill by his appearance on every heart. The pale skin, the full blue eye, the fair curls that clustered round the lofty brow, bespoke an unmixed descent from the tribes of some northern land of mountain and forest; and that eye, that brow, those lineaments, were all familiar to the shuddering circle as the reflexion of their own in the polished mirror.