The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack,
or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own
feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an
old stocking full of gold pieces hid away in a snug corner."

"Why do they not buy food then?" asked Sir Nigel. "By St. Paul! it
seemed to me their bones were breaking through their skin."

"It is their grutching and grumbling which makes them thin. We have a
saying here, Sir Nigel, that if you pummel Jacques Bonhomme he will pat
you, but if you pat him he will pummel you. Doubtless you find it so in
England."

"Ma foi, no!" said Sir Nigel. "I have two Englishmen of this class in
my train, who are at this instant, I make little doubt, as full of your
wine as any cask in your cellar. He who pummelled them might come by
such a pat as he would be likely to remember."

"I cannot understand it," quoth the seneschal, "for the English knights
and nobles whom I have met were not men to brook the insolence of the
base born."

"Perchance, my fair lord, the poor folk are sweeter and of a better
countenance in England," laughed the Lady Rochefort. "Mon Dieu! you
cannot conceive to yourself how ugly they are! Without hair, without
teeth, all twisted and bent; for me, I cannot think how the good God
ever came to make such people. I cannot bear it, I, and so my trusty
Raoul goes ever before me with a cudgel to drive them from my path."

"Yet they have souls, fair lady, they have souls!" murmured the
chaplain, a white-haired man with a weary, patient face.

"So I have heard you tell them," said the lord of the castle; "and for
myself, father, though I am a true son of holy Church, yet I think
that you were better employed in saying your mass and in teaching the
children of my men-at-arms, than in going over the country-side to put
ideas in these folks' heads which would never have been there but for
you. I have heard that you have said to them that their souls are as
good as ours, and that it is likely that in another life they may stand
as high as the oldest blood of Auvergne. For my part, I believe that
there are so many worthy knights and gallant gentlemen in heaven who
know how such things should be arranged, that there is little fear that
we shall find ourselves mixed up with base roturiers and swine-herds.
Tell your beads, father, and con your psalter, but do not come between
me and those whom the king has given to me!"

"God hel