is well known to your Majesty, and seldom exchange steel
and buff for velvet and gold--but thus far I know, that our choicest
beauties are waiting upon the Queen's Majesty and the Princess, to a
pilgrimage to the convent of Engaddi, to accomplish their vows for your
Highness's deliverance from this trouble."

"And is it thus," said Richard, with the impatience of indisposition,
"that royal matrons and maidens should risk themselves, where the dogs
who defile the land have as little truth to man as they have faith
towards God?"

"Nay, my lord," said De Vaux, "they have Saladin's word for their
safety."

"True, true!" replied Richard; "and I did the heathen Soldan
injustice--I owe him reparation for it. Would God I were but fit
to offer it him upon my body between the two hosts--Christendom and
heathenesse both looking on!"

As Richard spoke, he thrust his right arm out of bed naked to the
shoulder, and painfully raising himself in his couch, shook his clenched
hand, as if it grasped sword or battle-axe, and was then brandished over
the jewelled turban of the Soldan. It was not without a gentle degree of
violence, which the King would scarce have endured from another, that
De Vaux, in his character of sick-nurse, compelled his royal master
to replace himself in the couch, and covered his sinewy arm, neck, and
shoulders with the care which a mother bestows upon an impatient child.

"Thou art a rough nurse, though a willing one, De Vaux," said the King,
laughing with a bitter expression, while he submitted to the strength
which he was unable to resist; "methinks a coif would become thy
lowering features as well as a child's biggin would beseem mine. We
should be a babe and nurse to frighten girls with."

"We have frightened men in our time, my liege," said De Vaux; "and, I
trust, may live to frighten them again. What is a fever-fit, that we
should not endure it patiently, in order to get rid of it easily?"

"Fever-fit!" exclaimed Richard impetuously; "thou mayest think, and
justly, that it is a fever-fit with me; but what is it with all the
other Christian princes--with Philip of France, with that dull Austrian,
with him of Montserrat, with the Hospitallers, with the Templars--what
is it with all them? I will tell thee. It is a cold palsy, a dead
lethargy, a disease that deprives them of speech and action, a canker
that has eaten into the heart of all that is noble, and chivalrous, and
virtuous among them--that has