th of love nor of
hate, no bottom, little faith.' Berengere rose.

'You vex yourself, Bertran, and me also,' she said. 'It is ill talking
between a prince and his friend.'

'Am I not your friend then, my lady?' he asked her with bitterness.

'You cannot be the friend of a prince, Bertran,' said Berengere calmly.
His muttered 'O God, the true word!' sufficed him for thought all his
road from Navarre. He went, as you know already, to Poictiers, where
Richard was making festival with Jehane.

But when, unhappy liar, he found out the truth, it came too late to be
of service to his designs. Don Sancho, he learned, was beforehand with
him even there, fully informed of the outrage at Gisors and the marriage
at Poictiers, with very clear views of the worth of each performance.
Bertran, gnashing his teeth, took up the service of the man he loathed;
gnashing his teeth, he let Richard kiss him in the lists and shower
favours upon him. When presents of stallions came from Navarre he began
to see what Don Sancho was about. Any meeting of Richard and that
profound schemer would have been Bertran's ruin. So when Richard was
King, he judged it time to be off.

'Now here,' says Abbot Milo, dealing with the same topics, 'I make an
end of Bertran de Born, who did enough mischief in his life to give
three kings wretchedness--the young King Henry, and the old King Henry,
and the new King Richard. If he was not the thorn of Anjou, whose thorn
was he? Some time afterwards he died alone and miserable, having seen
(as he thought) all his plots miscarry, the object of his hatred do the
better for his evil designs, and the object of his love the better
without them. He was cast off. His peers were at the Holy War, his enemy
on a throne. There had arisen a generation which shrugged at his eld,
and remained one which still thought him a misgoverned youth. Great poet
he was, great thief, and a silly fool. So there's an end of him: let him
be.'

CHAPTER XVI

CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND OF JEHANE THE FAIR

It was in the gules of August, we read, that King Richard set out for
his duchy and kingdom, on horseback, riding alone, splendid in red and
gold; Countess Jehane in a litter; his true brother and his
half-brother, his bishops, his chancellor, and his friends with him,
each according to his degree. They went by Alencon, Lisieux, and Pont
l'Eveque to Rouen; and there they found the Queen-Mother, an
unquenchable spirit. One of Richard's