for the Kurds would not give heed to the Turks nor the latter to the Kurds. So everything was in the cauldron again. Fortunately for the Moslem cause the same discord which possessed them was also present in the councils of the Franks. These had now advanced to within sight of the city, and there was no apparent reason why they should not come in. The pious Cadi laid their abrupt turn about to the influence of the Friday prayers, and more especially to those which the Sultan spoke beneath his breath so that none should overhear, while the tears ran through his beard and moistened the carpet upon which he knelt. More commonplace reasons appear in the arguments of Richard himself, supported by the Syrian Franks generally and by the Hospitallers and Templars, who argued that what with the inclement weather ruining their food and rusting their armor, with the water supplies for a besieging army polluted by the enemy, with the known disposition of the knights and soldiers to leave for home as soon as they should have taken the city — if, indeed, they should be so fortunate — it would be folly to go on. Much better take Ascalon and Damascus and then go on to Egypt, when they would have all the Moslems at their mercy. Against this had been great clamor on the part of the French, who insisted they had come to rescue the Holy City and cried shame on those who would abandon the chief purpose of their coming. With hopelessly