As soon as the sentence was pronounced--painful, degrading, abhorrent as that sentence was--some portion of the prisoner’s anxiety was relieved; at least, his demeanor was more firm. He raised his eyes, and looked steadily upon the vast crowd which was exulting in his approaching degradation. If there was no composure on his brow, neither was there that appearance of abject depression by which his soul and body had appeared to be alike prostrated. Nay, for an instant his eye flashed and his lip curled, as he tore the collar of knighthood and the shield from his neck, and cast them at the feet of the herald, who was approaching to fulfil the decree. “I had discarded them before,” he said, “nor does it grieve me now to behold them thus.” Yet, notwithstanding the vaunt, his proud spirit was stung--stung more deeply by the sense of degradation than by the fear of death. The spurs which had so often goaded his charger to glory, amid the acclamations and admiration of thousands, were hacked from his heels by the sordid cleaver; the falcon-crest, which had once been a rallying-point and a beacon amid the dust and confusion of the fight, was shorn from his casque; the quarterings of many a noble family were erased from his proud escutcheon, and the shield itself reversed and hung aloft upon the ignominious tree. The pride which had burst into a momentary blaze of indignation, had already ceased to act upon his flagging spirits; and, when a confessor was tendered to him, and he was even offered the privilege of readmission within the pale of the church, he trembled. “The crime--if crime there be--is his,” he said, pointing toward Guy de Lusignan. “I had served him, and served the cross, as never man did, had he not spurned me with injury, and disgraced me before his court, when I sought the hand of her whom I had rescued by my lance from paynim slavery. Had I been the meanest soldier in the Christian army, my deeds had won me a title to respect, at least, if not to favor. De Lusignan and his haughty daughter drove me forth to seek those rights and that honor from the gratitude of the infidel which were denied by my brothers-in-arms. If I am a sinner, he made me what I am; and now he slays me for it! I say not, ‘Let him give me the hand which he then denied me;’ but let him spare my life, and I am again a Christian; my sword shall again shine in the van of his array; the plots, the stratagems, the secrets of the moslem, shall be his. I, even I, the scorned and condemned renegado, can do more to replace De Lusignan on the throne of Jerusalem than the lances of ten thousand crusaders--ay, than the boasted prowess of Cœur de Lion, or the myriads of France and Austria! All this will I do for him--all this, and more--if he but grants me life. I cannot--I dare not die!--What said I?--I a Falkenhorst, and dare not!”