In obedience to the soothsayers, the devotees of Louis the Pious had perished by tens of thousands, and over their corpses the Moslems had marched to victory. The defenders of Christ’s cross had been slaughtered like sheep upon the mountains of the Beatitudes, and sold into slavery in herds at Damascus and Aleppo; even the men who, at the bidding of God’s vicar, had left Dandolo to fight for the Sepulchre upon the barren hills of Palestine, had been immolated. Five hundred had perished in shipwreck, more had been massacred in Illyria, none had received reward. But those who, in defiance of the supernatural and in contempt of their vow, had followed the excommunicated Venetian to plunder fellow-Christians, had won immeasurable glory, and been sated with incalculable spoil. The pilgrims who, constant to the end, had been spilling their blood in God’s service, came trooping to the Bosphorus to share in the last remaining crumbs; the knights of the Temple and the Hospital set sail for Greece, where money might still be made by the sword, and the King of Jerusalem stood before the Tomb, naked unto his enemies. Innocent himself was cowed; his commands had been disregarded and his curse defied; laymen had insulted his legate, and had, without consulting him, divided among themselves the patronage of the Church; and yet for the strongest there was no moral law. When Baldwin announced that he was emperor, the pope called him “his dearest son,” and received his subjects into the Roman communion.[141] But yesterday, the greatest king of Christendom had stood weeping, begging for the life of his wife; a hundred years earlier an emperor had stood barefoot, and freezing in the snow, at the gate of Canossa, as a penance for rebellion; but in 1204 a Venetian merchant was blessed by the haughtiest of popes for having stolen Christ’s army, made war on his flock, spurned his viceregent, flouted his legate, and usurped his patrimony. He had appointed a patriarch without a reference to Rome. All was forgiven, the appointment was confirmed, the sinner was shriven; nothing could longer resist the power of money, for consolidation had begun. Yet, though nature may discriminate against him, the emotionalist will always be an emotionalist, for such is the texture of his brain; and while he breathes, he will hate the materialist. The next year Baldwin was defeated and captured by the Bulgarians, and then Innocent wrote a letter to the Marquis of Montferrat, which showed how the wound had rankled when he blessed the conqueror. He said bitterly:--