JL-D. 1253.3 QUARREL BETWEEN TWO BSQUTRES. 497 m e eagerly. When they had seen him, they recommended him to God, as he did the same to them in return. The next day the king and his army marched to a place called Passe-poulain,* about a league distant from Acre, where are many beautiful springs of water, with which the sugarcanes are irrigated. When I was lodged, one of my knights said to me, " Sir, you are now much better quartered than you were before Saint Sur." Upon which another of my knights, who had fixed, on my lodgings the preceding day, replied, "Yo u are w too foolhardy in thus blaming me to my lord ; and having said this, he sprang on the other knight, and seized him b y the hair. Astonished at the presumption of the knight, who had thus in my presence seized his companion, I ran to them, and gave the aggressor a hard blow between the shoulders, which made him quit his hold of the knight's hair. I then ordered him to quit my lodgings instantly, for that never more, as God might help me, should he be of my household. The knight went away making great moan to Sir Gilles le Brun, then constable of France, who shortly after came to me to entreat I would take my knight again, for that he was sorely repentant of his folly. 1 told him I could not do any thing until the legate had absolved me from my oath. The constable then went to the legate, told him the case, and requested him to give me absolution from the oath I had sworn ; but the legate said, he had not the power to absolve me, seeing that I was justified in making such an oath, and that the knight had richly deserved it by his conduct. This story I wished to introduce into my book, as an example to all not to make any oaths without very suffi cient grounds for so doing ; for the wise man says, that those who swear on every occasion will probably as often forswear. On the day following, the king marched his army before the city of Sur, which is called Thiry in the Bible. When there, the king was pressed to march and take a city hard by called Belinas ; his council advised him to it, but not to go thither in person, to which, with some difficulty, he was persuaded. It was determined that the count d'Anjou should march thither, with Sir Philip de Montfort, the lord * See note at page 466.