keep to the narratives of Jacques de Vitry and William of Tyre.[25]
Although the latter wrote at a comparatively late date (between 1275 and
1295), he followed a truly historic method, and founded his work on
authentic documents; we see that he knows no more than Jacques de Vitry
of the proposal said to have been made by Francis to pass through a fire
if the priests of Mahomet would do as much, intending so to establish
the superiority of Christianity.

We know how little such an appeal to signs is characteristic of St.
Francis. Perhaps the story, which comes from Bonaventura, is born of a
misconception. The sultan, like a new Pharaoh, may have laid it upon the
strange preacher to prove his mission by miracles. However this may be,
Francis and his companions were treated with great consideration, a fact
the more meritorious that hostilities were then at their height.

Returned to the Crusading camp, they remained there until after the
taking of Damietta (November 5, 1219). This time the Christians were
victorious, but perhaps the heart of the _gospel man_ bled more for this
victory than for the defeat of August 29th. The shocking condition of
the city, which the victors found piled with heaps of dead bodies, the
quarrels over the sharing of booty, the sale of the wretched creatures
who had not succumbed to the pestilence,[26] all these scenes of
terror, cruelty, greed, caused him profound horror. The "human beast"
was let loose, the apostle's voice could no more make itself heard in
the midst of the savage clamor than that of a life-saver over a raging
ocean.

He set out for Syria[27] and the Holy Places. How gladly would we
follow him in this pilgrimage, accompany him in thought through Judea
and Galilee, to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Gethsemane! What was said to