thur's imprisonment, and more concerned in his death, than were the
interests of John himself. John's one remaining chance of holding
Philip and the Bretons in check was to keep them in uncertainty
whether Arthur were alive or dead, in order to prevent the Bretons
from adopting any decided policy, and hamper the French King in his
dealings with them and with the Angevin and Poitevin rebels by
compelling him to base his alliance with them on conditions avowedly
liable to be annulled at any moment by Arthur's reappearance on the
political scene. If, therefore, Arthur--as is most probable--was now
really dead, whether he had indeed perished a victim of one of those
fits of ungovernable fury in which--and in which alone--the Angevin
counts sometimes added blunder to crime, or whether he had died a
natural death from sickness in prison, or by a fall in attempting to
escape,[35] it would be equally politic on John's part to let rumor do
its worst rather than suffer any gleam of light to penetrate the
mystery which shrouded the captive's fate.

John's chance, however, was a desperate one. A fortnight after Easter,
1203, the French King attacked and took Saumur. Moving southward, he
was joined by some Poitevins and Bretons, with whose help he captured
sundry castles in Aquitaine. Thence he went back to the Norman border,
to be welcomed at Alencon by its count, and to lay seige to Conches.
John, who was then at Falaise, sent William the Marshal to Conches, to
beg that Philip would "have pity on him and make peace." Philip
refused; John hurried back to Rouen, to find both city and castle in
flames--whether kindled by accident or by treachery there is nothing
to show. Conches was taken; Vaudreuil was betrayed; the few other
castles in the county of Evreux which had not already passed, either
by cession, conquest, or treason, into Philip's hands shared the like
fate, while John flitted restlessly up and down between Rouen and
various places in the neighborhood, but made no direct effort to check
the progress of the invader. Messenger after messenger came to him
with the same story: "The King of France is in your land as an enemy;
he is taking your castles; he is binding your seneschals to their
horses' tails and dragging them shamefully to prison; he is dealing
with your goods at his own pleasure." John heard them all with an
unmoved countenance, and dismissed them all with the unvarying reply:
"Let him alone! Some day I shall win