any prelude, "four years ago
I was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that
Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children
I might have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you
the province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith
of loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as
your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither the enfeoffment
nor the lady, but only excuses, Sire Philippe."

With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the
public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private
grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard
answer before the council; and become so voluble that Sire Edward
merely laughed, in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and
afterward lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his
lesser title of Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador.

And negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself
with zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a
politician so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of
expediency with a parrot-like reiteration of the trivial circumstance
that already the bargain was signed and sworn to; and, in consequence,
while daily they fumed over his stupidity, daily he gained his point.
During this period he was, upon one pretext or another, very largely in
the company of his affianced wife, Dame Blanch.

This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could
nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she
compelled the eye, it is recorded, not gently but in a superb fashion.
And Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely by report, and,
in accordance with the high custom of old, through many perusals of her
portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man, near sixty; huge
and fair he was, with a crisp beard, and stalwart as a tower; and the
better-read at Mezelais likened the couple to Sieur Hercules at the
feet of Queen Omphale when they saw the two so much together.

The ensuing Wednesday the court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the
woods of Ermenoueil, which stand thick about the chateau; and upon that
day these two had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with
Dame Meregrett, the French King's younger sister. She sat a little
apart from the betrothed, and stared through the h