there throughout the game you would have seen
much to admire," continued Aldobrandino. "Ah! the pretty little feet,
the shapely ankles! But marked you those of her sisters? Cranes and
ostriches! storks and sandpipers! And they call themselves not
water-fowl but women!"

"Swine!" said Richard to himself, "hog, not another word or I shall
burst. And what unspeakable villainy is this that I should have taken
service to deliver so pure and precious a maiden into the power of such
a beast!"

This feeling grew upon him in the short space of time before the
tournament, for he met her daily, and as he marked her,--the flicker of
her eyelashes upon her cheeks and the quick in-drawing of breath through
her sensitive nostrils when the tales of the trouveres and jests of the
jongleurs offended her exquisite modesty--his heart swelled with pain
intolerable that so pure a flower should be set up as a prize for the
hardest fighter to snuff at. Not so, he made bold to express his mind to
Aldobrandino, should such a maid be won.

"How then," snorted the other in astonishment. "What method were fairer,
I ask you?"

"What than to appeal to her own heart," Richard made answer, "and that
by gentle observance, delicate attentions, and such refinements of
self-sacrifice as in their practice might elevate a lover to some
worthiness of the honour he courts?"

Aldobrandino sniffed his scorn. "Appeal to her heart in the last resort
I grant you, but only thus: Lady, will you have me? An she will _not_,
what would your servility gain? An she _will_, it is needless. In either
case it is ridiculous. Trust me, a woman sets more store by the man who
compels her admiration than by him who sues for it. If he breaks the
bones of other men to win her, that is compliment enough and mark you
well, Ricciardo, it is all that I demand of you in my service."

So the week sped before the tournament; and Richard loved Sancie more
and more, and ever Aldobrandino was at his side taunting him until he
burst forth into many a torrent of indignation, whereat the other but
laughed and leered, so that Richard loathed and hated him to the death.

At last came the great day, and among the pennons of the challenging
knights, which made gay the ancient amphitheatre of Arles where the
lists were staked, there fluttered one bearing the device of a golden
cup from which ran a stream of silver water. Also when Richard, with
visor drawn and all in mail of shining steel, c