Khakan is far away, sire," he said. "If it took his envoys forty
weeks to reach us, it will be a good year before his armies are on the
skirts of Egypt. As well make alliance with a star."

But Louis was in missionary mood. "God's ways are not as our ways. To
Him a thousand years are a day, and He can make the weakest confound a
multitude. This far-away King asks for instruction, and I will send him
holy men to fortify his young faith. And this knight, of whom you, my
lord of St. Pol, speak well, shall bear the greetings of a soldier."

Louis' face, which for usual was grave like a wise child's, broke into
a smile which melted Aimery's heart. He scarcely heard the Count of
St. Pol as that stout friend enlarged on his merits. "The knight of
Beaumanoir," so ran the testimony, "has more learning than any clerk. In
Spain he learned the tongues of the heathen, and in Paris he read deep
in their philosophy. Withal he is a devout son of Holy Chutch."

The boy blushed at the praise and the King's kindly regard. But St. Pol
spoke truth, for Aimery, young as he was, had travelled far both on the
material globe and in the kingdom of the spirit. As a stripling he had
made one of the Picardy Nation in the schools of Paris. He had studied
the metaphysics of Aristotle under Aquinas, and voyaged strange seas of
thought piloted by Roger, the white-bearded Englishman. Thence, by the
favour of the Queen-mother, he had gone as squire to Alphonso's court of
Castile, where the Spanish doctors had opened windows for him into the
clear dry wisdom of the Saracens. He had travelled with an embassy
to the Emperor, and in Sicily had talked with the learned Arabs
who clustered around the fantastic Frederick. In Italy he had met
adventurers of Genoa and Venice who had shown him charts of unknown
oceans and maps of Prester John's country and the desert roads that
led to Cambaluc, that city farther than the moon, and told him tales of
awful and delectable things hidden beyond the dawn. He had returned to
his tower by the springs of Canche, a young man with a name for uncanny
knowledge, a searcher after concealed matters, negligent of religion and
ill at ease in his world.

Then Louis cast his spell over him. He saw the King first at a great
hunting in Avesnes and worshipped from afar the slight body, royal in
every line of it, and the blue eyes which charmed and compelled, for he
divined there a spirit which had the secret of both earth and heaven.