“If I had only your generosity to have combated, I would have discovered to you the cause which urged me to this flight—convinced, that you would rather have favoured than opposed it; but your love and religion being insurmountable obstacles, I was obliged to make use of artifice to be just.—I quit you not, my lord, through inconstancy, I follow my husband, my father, and my brother, who were the three captives whose lives you granted me; my husband having exposed his for your glory, and the security of your dominions, has, in part, acquitted me of the obligations I owe you.—I am a christian, and was a sovereign before your wife; judge therefore, whether my rank and religion did not demand this of me.---I shall always with gratitude remember the honour you have done me; I have left you my daughter, being obliged to abandon her on account of her youth:---Look on her, I intreat you, with the eyes of a father.---I wish you all the happiness you deserve, and shall with fervency beg of Heaven to bless you with that divine illumination, which is the only thing in which your heroic virtues are deficient.
“Ponthieu.”
The Sultan saw the galley return, and received the Princess’s letter, while she was prosecuting her journey to Rome; he was inconceivably afflicted at the news, but his reason at length getting the better of his despair, he endeavoured to comfort himself, by transplanting all the tenderness he had paid the mother to the little daughter. In the mean time, our illustrious fugitives arrived at Rome; where they were received by the Pope with extraordinary honours; and after having reconciled the Princess and Sayda to the bosom of the church, they departed, loaded with presents and favours to Ponthieu, where the unanimous joy of the people for their return is not to be expressed. The Count dying some time after, his son inherited his dominions; but that young prince not long surviving, he left the sovereignty to the Princess his sister, who with her husband reigned a long time in perfect glory and happy unity. The son she had by the Sultan, married a rich Heiress of Normandy, from whom are descended the lords of Preau; and the princess, who was left behind with the Sultan, was married to a Saracen prince, and from a daughter of that princess was born the famous Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, so known and dreaded by all christianity.