he back of Montferrat,
then Gossip is a liar, Richard, for his part, took no account of John
and his shifts; a wave of disgust for the creeping youth had filled the
stronger man, and having got him into Paris there seemed nothing better
to do with him than to let him alone. But that sensitive gorge of
Richard's was one of his worst enemies: if he did not mean to hold the
snake in the stick, he had better not have cleft the stick. As for John
and his writhing, I am only half concerned with them; but let me tell
you this. Whatever he did or did not sprang not from hatred of this or
that man, but from fear, or from love of his own belly. Every prince of
the house of Anjou loved inordinately some member of himself, some a
noble member nobly, and others basely a base member. If John loved his
belly, Richard loved his royal head: but enough. To be done with all
this, Richard was summoned to the French King hot-foot, within a day or
two of his coming; went immediately with his chaplain Anselm and other
one or two, and was immediately received. He had, in fact, obeyed in
such haste that he found two in the audience-chamber instead of one.
With Philip of France was Conrad of Montferrat, a large, pale,
ruminating Italian, full of bluster and thick blood. The French King was
a youth, just the age of Jehane, of the thin, sharp, black-and-white
mould into which had run the dregs of Capet. He was smooth-faced like a
girl, and had no need to shave; his lips were very thin, set crooked in
his face. So far as he was boy he loved and admired Richard, so far as
he was Capet he distrusted him with all the rest of the world.

Richard knelt to his suzerain and was by him caught up and kissed.
Philip made him sit at his side on the throne. This put Montferrat, who
was standing, sadly out of countenance, for he considered himself (as
perhaps he was) the superior of any man uncrowned.

It seems that some news had drifted in on the west wind. 'Richard, oh,
Richard!' the King began, half whimsical and half vexed, 'What have you
been doing in Touraine?'

'Fair sire,' answered Richard, 'I have been doing what will, I fear,
give pain to our cousin Montferrat. I have been breaking the back of the
Count of Saint-Pol.' At this the Marquess, suffused with dark blood till
he was colour of lead, broke out, pointing his finger as well as his
words. As the bilge-water jets from a ketch when the hold is surcharged,
so did the Marquess jet his expletives.