244 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book I.

Yertot, like Bosio, complains that nohistorians relate when the change fromreligious to military began. Of course they donot, for no such change ever took place. Fromthe foundation the whole was natural, and offendednone of the tastes of the age, but was in its veryspirit, neither more nor less than the crusade: andall Europe had given full proof of the universalway of thinking, by the voluntary progress of all theEuropeans then alive. In no way could the asso-ciation of nobility and servants-at-arms agree after-wards. But then it did, and they glided in to-gether without the least difficulty; and once the rulewas established, no one ever saw anything in thathonourable familiarity but justice and truth; andso it has come down to our own time without asingle objection. In the presence of a loftier, alllower ideas vanished. There would have been soona difficulty, but then there was none. Gerardkneiv how to take the ball at the hop. Like mostother great discoveries, it seemed quite easy wheneffected, and in the usual course, nothing tostartle. I avow that after I had learned to doubtthe current opinion, I yet thought that Raymondmust have written something of a body of laws, orleft some fine charter, to acquire the fame of alegislator, though not the order’s founder, or its