eader.

"The misproud and amphibious caitiff puts the monk upon me," said
Richard to the Earl of Salisbury. "But, Longsword, we will let it pass.
A punctilio must not lose Christendom the services of these experienced
lances, because their victories have rendered them overweening. Lo you,
here comes our valiant adversary, the Duke of Austria. Mark his manner
and bearing, Longsword--and thou, Nubian, let the hound have full view
of him. By Heaven, he brings his buffoons along with him!"

In fact, whether from habit, or, which is more likely, to intimate
contempt of the ceremonial he was about to comply with, Leopold was
attended by his SPRUCH-SPRECHER and his jester; and as he advanced
towards Richard, he whistled in what he wished to be considered as an
indifferent manner, though his heavy features evinced the sullenness,
mixed with the fear, with which a truant schoolboy may be seen to
approach his master. As the reluctant dignitary made, with discomposed
and sulky look, the obeisance required, the SPRUCH-SPRECHER shook his
baton, and proclaimed, like a herald, that, in what he was now doing,
the Archduke of Austria was not to be held derogating from the rank and
privileges of a sovereign prince; to which the jester answered with a
sonorous AMEN, which provoked much laughter among the bystanders.

King Richard looked more than once at the Nubian and his dog; but
the former moved not, nor did the latter strain at the leash, so
that Richard said to the slave with some scorn, "Thy success in this
enterprise, my sable friend, even though thou hast brought thy hound's
sagacity to back thine own, will not, I fear, place thee high in the
rank of wizards, or much augment thy merits towards our person."

The Nubian answered, as usual, only by a lowly obeisance.

Meantime the troops of the Marquis of Montserrat next passed in order
before the King of England. That powerful and wily baron, to make the
greater display of his forces, had divided them into two bodies. At the
head of the first, consisting of his vassals and followers, and levied
from his Syrian possessions, came his brother Enguerrand; and he himself
followed, leading on a gallant band of twelve hundred Stradiots, a kind
of light cavalry raised by the Venetians in their Dalmatian possessions,
and of which they had entrusted the command to the Marquis, with whom
the republic had many bonds of connection. These Stradiots were clothed
in a fashion partly European, b