In the time of the Crusades there was a wretched little people of mountaineers inhabiting the caverns near the road to Damascus. These brigands elected a chief, whom they named Cheik Elchassissin. It is said that this honorific title of _cheik_ originally signified _old_, as with us the title of _seigneur_ comes from _senior_, elder, and the word _graf_, a count, signifies _old_ among the Germans; for, in ancient times almost every people conferred the civil command upon the old men. Afterwards, the command having become hereditary, the title of _cheik, graf, seigneur, or count_ has been given to children; and the Germans call a little master of four years old, _the count_--that is, the _old gentleman_.
The Crusaders named the old man of the Arabian mountains, the Old Man of the Hill, and imagined him to be a great prince, because he had caused a count of Montserrat and some other crusading nobles to be robbed and murdered on the highway. These people were called _the assassins_, and their cheik the king of the vast country of _the assassins_. This vast territory is five or six leagues long by two or three broad, being part of Anti-Libanus, a horrible country, full of rocks, like almost all Palestine, but intersected by pleasant meadowlands, which feed numerous flocks, as is attested by all who have made the journey from Aleppo to Damascus.
The cheik or senior of these _assassins_ could be nothing more than a chief of banditti; for there was at that time a sultan of Damascus who was very powerful.
Our romance-writers of that day, as fond of chimeras as the Crusaders, thought proper to relate that in 1236 this great prince of the assassins, fearing that Louis IX., of whom he had never heard, would put himself at the head of a crusade, and come and take from him his territory, sent two great men of his court from the caverns of Anti-Libanus to Paris to assassinate that king; but that having the next day heard how generous and amiable a prince Louis was, he immediately sent out to sea two more great men to countermand the assassination. I say out to sea, for neither the two emissaries sent to kill Louis, nor the two others sent to save him, could make the voyage without embarking at Joppa, which was then in the power of the Crusaders, which rendered the enterprise doubly marvellous. The two first must have found a Crusaders' vessel ready to convey them in an amicable manner, and the two last must have found another.