“SUPER LEONEM ET ASPIDEM” 433

5. And truly Maid Venice herself, in the first look of her seen from Lido through the tents, seems less divinely enthusiastic than usual. Athena ‘Agoraia,¹ it appears; having her blue eyes occasionally turned to her cupboard from her armoury.

Yes; but then observe first she had been a prudent young Pallas, and had got something in her cupboard. A nice little housekeeper, in the very zenith of her prosperous affairs, is suddenly called to the door by this brilliant party of pious soldiery, rollicking up the street. “Here, we want all you’ve got in the house, mistress-cakes and ale for the lot of us; we’re all going to dig up the Holy Sepulchre. Hurrah!”

The young housekeeper holds the door ajar, and thinks twice about it!

They asked her simply to carry them to the Holy Land and feed them there! Four thousand five hundred knights, four thousand five hundred horses, nine thousand squires, twenty thousand rank and file.

Stipulations, etc.

[Here the MS. breaks off. The reference is to the terms exacted by Venice from the crusaders: see Gibbon, ch. lx.: “It was proposed that the crusaders should assemble at Venice; that flat-bottomed vessels should be prepared for 4500 horses, and 9000 squires, with a number of ships sufficient for the embarkation of 4500 knights, and 20,000 foot; that during a term of nine months they should be supplied with provisions, and transported to whatever coast the service of God and Christendom should require; and that the Republic should join the armament with a squadron of fifty galleys. It was required that the pilgrims should pay, before their departure, a sum of 85,000 marks of silver; and that all conquests, by sea or land, should be equally divided between the confederates.”]

¹ [For this phrase, see Crown of Wild Olive, § 73 (Vol. XVIII. p. 448), and compare Vol. XIV. p. 403.]

XXIV. 2E

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