ween Tancred and Richard had
been formed, as related in the last chapter. The letter said that
Richard was a treacherous man, in whom no reliance could be placed;
that he had no intention of keeping the treaty that he had made, but
was laying a scheme for attacking Tancred in his Sicilian dominions;
and, finally, it closed with an offer on the part of the writer to
assist Tancred in driving Richard and all his followers out of the
island.

When Richard read this letter, he was at first in a dreadful rage, and
he broke out into an explosion of the most violent, profane, and
passionate language that can be conceived. Presently he looked at the
letter again, and on reperusing it, and carefully considering its
contents, he declared that he did not believe that Philip ever wrote
it. It was a stratagem of Tancred's, he thought, designed to promote a
quarrel between Richard and his ally. Tancred assured him that Philip
did write the letter, or, at least, that it was brought to him as
from Philip by the Duke of Burgundy, one of his principal officers.

"You may ask the Duke of Burgundy," said he, "and if he denies it, I
will challenge him to a duel through one of my barons."

It was necessary that the parties to a duel, in those days, should be
of equal rank, so that, if a king had a quarrel with a nobleman of
another nation, he could only send one of his own noblemen of the same
rank to be his representative in the combat. But this proposal of
sending another man to risk his life in maintaining the cause of his
king on a question of veracity, in which the person so sent had no
interest whatever, illustrates very curiously the ideas of those
chivalrous times.

Richard did not go to the Duke of Burgundy, but, taking the letter
which Tancred had shown him, he waited until he found a good
opportunity, and then showed it to Philip. The two kings often fell
into altercations and disputes in their interviews with each other,
and it was in one of these that Richard produced the letter, offering
it by way of recrimination to some charges or accusations which Philip
was making against him. Philip denied having written the letter. It
was a forgery, he said, and he believed that Richard himself was the
author of it.

"You are trying every way you can," said he, "to find pretexts for
quarreling with me, and this is one of your devices. I know what you
are aiming at: you wish to quarrel with me so as to find some excuse
for breaking