I was trying to find out the ruins of a certain castle in Brittany, and
appealed, in my very best bad French, to an old road-mender. He scowled
at me, as if it had been in the days of the _Combat des Trente_, and
answered, "_Mais c'est de l'Anglais que vous me parlez la!_"

[361] Another trait of his may not displease readers, though it be not
strictly relevant. I once, perhaps with some faint mischievous intent,
asked him about the competence of Dr. Pusey and of M. Renan in the
sacred tongue. "Pusey," he said, "knew pretty well everything about
Hebrew that there was to be known in his day." He was not quite so
complimentary about Renan; though, as he put his judgment less
pointedly, I do not remember the exact words.

[362] With a bow and arrows, remember; not a Browning pistol.

[363] The indebtedness to Michelet is pretty obvious.

[364] It may be well to illustrate this, lest it be said that having
been more than just to the father (_v. sup._) I am still less than just
to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fee in the _eleventh_
century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about
Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a
millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake--over whom even
Morgane had no power. The English child-King, for whom Bedford was
regent, is repeatedly called Henry _IV_. There would have been quite
other fish for Joan to fry, and other thread for her to retwist, if she
had had to do with Henry of Bolingbroke instead of Henry of Windsor.
Tristan's Mauthe Doog--not a bad kind of hound, though--bears the
"Celtic" name of Thor. Of course all these things are trifles, but they
are annoying and useless. When the father abridged Charles the First's
captivity from years to days, he did it for the good of his story. The
son had no such justification. He is also very careless about minute
joinings of the flats at a most important point of the conclusion (_v.
inf._). Tristan has no sword, begs one of the _bourreau_, and is
refused. He goes straight to church, and immediately afterwards we find
him sword in hand. Where did he get it? By an unmentioned miracle?

[365] Tristan defeats an effort of Xaintrailles to rescue her, in a way
vaguely resembling the defeat, in the greater Alexander's work, of the
rescue of King Charles by the Four.

[366] Unluckily, with a young man's misjudgment, Dumas would not let it
be the actual end, though that is n