ge the abhorred sum, and have stuff for their spleens for many
a year.' Even more than this smouldering nursed hate they love a
punctilio; they walk by forms, whether the road is to a lady's heart or
an enemy's throat. And so Saint-Pol found, and so Des Barres, Frenchmen
both and fiery young men, who shook their fists in the faces of the
Gurduns and the dust of such blockish hospitallers off their feet, when
they saw the course affairs were to run. Gilles de Gurdun, if you will
believe it, with the advice of his father and the countenance of his
young brother Bartholomew, would not budge an inch towards the recovery
of his wife or her ravisher's punishment until he had drawn out his
injury fair on parchment. This he then proposed to carry to his Duke,
old King Henry. 'Thus,' said the swart youth, 'I shall be within the law
of my land, and gain the engines of the law on my side.' He seemed to
think this important.

'With your accursed scruples,' cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you
will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my
sister is within the Count's country by this time!'

'Oh, leave him, leave him, Eustace,' said Des Barres, 'and come with me.
We shall meet him in the fair way yet, you and I together.' So the
Frenchmen rode away, and Gilles, with his father and his parchments and
his square forehead, went to Evreux, where King Henry then was.
Kneeling before their Duke, expounding their gravamens as if they were
suing out a writ of _Mort d'Ancestor_, they very soon found out that he
was no more a Norman than Saint-Pol. The old King made short work of
their '_ut predictum ests_' and '_Quaesumus igiturs_.'

'Good sirs,' says he, knitting his brows, 'where is this lord who has
done you so much injury?'

'My lord,' they report, 'he has her in his strong tower on the plain of
Saint-Andre, some ten leagues from here.'

Then cries the old King, 'Smoke him out, you fools! What! a badger. Draw
the thief.'

Then Gilles the elder flattened his lips together and afterwards pursed
them. 'Lord,' he said, 'that we dare not do without your express
commandment.'

'Why, why,' snaps the King, 'if I give it you, my solemn fools?'

Young Gilles stood up, a weighty youth. 'Lord Duke,' he said, 'this lord
is the Count of Poictou, your son.' It had been a fine sight for sinful
men to see the eyes of the old King strike fire at this word. His
speech, they tell me, was terrible, glutted with rage.

'H