So on that afternoon Gilbert's reputation grew suddenly, as a bright lily that has been long in bud under a wet sky breaks out like a flame in the first sunshine; and the days were over when he must trudge along unnoticed in the vast throng of nobles, with his two men and his modest baggage. Meanwhile the council was held in the King's tent of state, within which three hundred nobles sat at ease after the King himself had taken his place on the throne, with the Queen on his right hand. There the red-bearded Frederick of Suabia, nephew to Conrad and famous afterward as the Emperor Barbarossa, stood up and told his tale: how the wild German knights had truly forced their leaders to take the mountain road and fight the Seljuks at a disadvantage; how the Seljuks appeared and disappeared again from hour to hour, falling upon their prey at every turn, reddening every pass with blood, and leaving half-killed men among the slain to wonder whence the swift smiters had come and whither they were gone. He himself had wounds not healed, and he told how, day by day, the mad bravery of the Germans, and the fury of his Black Forest men-at-arms, had risen again and again to very desperation, to sink before evening in a new defeat; until, at last, as the Seljuk swords still killed and killed, a terror had fallen upon the host in the passes, and men had thrown away their armour and fled like rats from a burning granary, so that their leaders could not hold them. He, with a few strong helpers, had covered his flying troops, and the brave Emperor Conrad, giant in strength, the greatest swordsman of the world, was even now fighting at the hindmost rear of the army to save whom he could. It had been madness, he told them all, to try the mountain ways. To Palestine there were two roads, and they might choose between them, either following the long coast round Asia Minor to the Gulf of Cyprus, or else, going down to the Propontis, they might get ships from Constantinople and sail to the ports of Syria. The short way was death, and though death were nothing, it meant failure and destruction to the Christian power in Jerusalem and Antioch. Thus he spoke, and the King and Queen and all the great nobles heard him in silence. There were the great Counts of Flanders and Toulouse, of Savoy, of Montferrat and Dreux and Blois, and the lords of Lusignan, of Coucy, of Courtenay, and of Bourbon, and the Bishops of Toul and Metz, and all the great knights of Gascony and Poitou, with many others of high name and good blood, who heard the red-bearded Duke speak. But when he had finished, none answered him, and the French King sat on his throne, repeating the prayers for the dead in a low voice. But Eleanor's eyes flashed fire and her gloved hand strained impatiently upon the carved arm of the chair of state. "Requiem eternam dona eis," muttered the King.