lady's
chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat--who knows not the
popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as
often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to
guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours. A
man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in
the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, when swords are blunted at point
and edge, and spears are tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel
pikes. Wert thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here
we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a band of
some threescore Saracens--what say you to charge them briskly? There are
but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each true knight."

"I recollect the Marquis replied," said De Vaux, "that his limbs were
of flesh, not of iron, and that he would rather bear the heart of a
man than of a beast, though that beast were the lion, But I see how
it is--we shall end where we began, without hope of praying at the
Sepulchre until Heaven shall restore King Richard to health."

At this grave remark Richard burst out into a hearty fit of laughter,
the first which he had for some time indulged in. "Why what a thing is
conscience," he said, "that through its means even such a thick-witted
northern lord as thou canst bring thy sovereign to confess his folly!
It is true that, did they not propose themselves as fit to hold my
leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken trappings
off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me
what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as
rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself? Yes,
De Vaux, I confess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The
Christian camp contains, doubtless, many a better knight than Richard of
England, and it would be wise and worthy to assign to the best of them
the leading of the host. But," continued the warlike monarch, raising
himself in his bed, and shaking the cover from his head, while his eyes
sparkled as they were wont to do on the eve of battle, "were such a
knight to plant the banner of the Cross on the Temple of Jerusalem while
I was unable to bear my share in the noble task, he should, so soon as I
was fit to lay lance in rest, undergo my challenge to mortal combat,
for having diminished my fame, and pressed in before to the object of my
enterprise. B