'it is laid in charge upon us to speak the
mind of France. Our master is greatly put about in his sister's affair,
and not he only, but his allies with him. Among whom, sire, you must be
pleased to reckon my lord John of Mortain.'

He had done better to leave John out; Richard's eyes burnt him, and his
voice cut. 'Let my brother John have her, who knows her rights and
wrongs. As for you, Des Barres, take back to your master your windy
conversation, and this also, that I allow no man to dictate marriages to
me.' So said, he broke up the audience, and would see no more of the
ambassadors. They, in two or three days, departed with what grace they
had in them.

The immediate effect of this, you may perhaps expect, was to drive
Richard all the road to Navarre. He was profoundly offended, so much so
that not Jehane herself dared speak to him. As he always did when his
heart mastered his head, he acted now alone and at once. In the heart we
choose to seat rage of all sorts, the purest and the most base, the most
fervent and the most cold. It so happened that there was business for
our King in Gascony, congenial business. Guillem de Chisi, a vassal of
his, had been robbing pilgrims, so Guillem was to be hanged. Richard
went swift-foot to Cahors, hanged Guillem in front of his own
gatehouse, then wrote letters to Pampluna inviting King Sancho to a
conference 'upon many affairs touching Almighty God and ourselves.' Thus
he put it, and King Sancho needed no accents to the vowels. The wise man
set out with a great train, his virgin with him.

* * * * *

The day of his expectation, King Richard heard mass in a most
unchristian frame of mind. There was no _Sursum Corda_ for him; but he
knelt like a stone image, inert and cold from breast to backbone; said
nothing, moved not. How differently do men and women stand at the gate
of sorrows! Not far off him knelt Countess Jehane, who in her hands
again (it may be said) held up her bleeding heart. The luxury of this
strange sacrifice made the girl glow like a fire opal; she was in a
fierce ecstasy, her lips parted, eyes half-shut; she breathed short, she
panted. There is no moralising over these things: love is a hearty
feeder, and thrives on a fast-day as well as on a gaudy. By fasting come
visions, tremors, swoonings and such like, dainty perversions of sense.
But part of Jehane's exaltation, you must know, came of another spur.
She had a sure and cert