In camp the common talk, combined with anxious curiosity, was, that Philip was jealous of Richard's warlike popularity, and Richard was jealous of the power and political weight of the King of France.
When St.

Jean d'Acre had been taken, the judicious Philip, in view of what it had cost the Christians of East and West, in time and blood, to recover this single town, considered that a fresh and complete conquest of Palestine and Syria, which was absolutely necessary for a re-establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem, was impossible: he had discharged what he owed to the crusade; and the course now permitted and prescribed to him was to give his attention to France.

The news he received from home was not encouraging; his son Louis, hardly four years old, had been dangerously ill; and he himself fell ill, and remained some days in bed, in the midst of the town he had just conquered.

His enemies called his illness in question, for already there was a rumor abroad that he had an idea of giving up the crusade, and returning to France; but the details given by contemporary chroniclers about the effects of his illness scarcely permit it to be regarded as a sham.

"Violent sweats," they say, "committed such havoc with his bones and all his members, that the nails fell from his fingers and the hair from his head, insomuch that it was believed--and, indeed, the rumor is not yet dispelled--that he had taken a deadly poison." There was nothing strange in Philip's illness, after all his fatigues, in such a country and such a season; Saladin, too, was ill at the same time, and more than once unable to take part with his troops in their engagements.