hind the memory of a stone
face which always looked east, a sword, a heart aloof, the myth of a
giant knight who spoke no English and did no charity, but was without
fear, cruelly just, and as cold as an outland grave. If you ask an
Englishman what he thinks of Richard Yea-and-Nay, he will tell
you:--That was a king without pity or fear or love, considering neither
God, nor the enemy of God, nor unhappy men. If the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom, the love of Him is the end of it. How could King
Richard love God, who did not fear enough; or we, who feared too much?

He crossed into Normandy, and at Honfleur was met by them who loved him
well; but he repaid them ill. Here also they seemed remote from his
acquaintance. Gaston of Bearn, with eyes alight, came dancing down the
quay, to be the first to kiss him. Richard, shaking with fever (or what
was like fever), gave him a burning dry hand, but looked away from him,
always hungrily to the east. Des Barres, who had thrown off allegiance
for his love, got no thanks for it. He may have known Abbot Milo again,
or Mercadet, his lean good captain: he said nothing to either of them.
His friends were confounded: here was the gallant shell of King Richard
with a new insatiable tenant. So indeed they found it. There was great
business to be done: war, the holding of Assise, the redressing of
wrongs from the sea to the Pyrenees. He did it, but in a terrible, hasty
way. It appeared that every formal act required fretted him to waste,
that every violent act allowed gave him little solace. It appeared that
he was living desperately fast, straining to fill up time, rather than
use it, towards some unknown, but (to him) certain end. His first act in
Normandy, after new coronation, was to besiege the border castles which
the French had filched in his absence. One of these was Gisors. He
would not go near Gisors; but conducted the leaguer from Rouen, as a
blindfold man plays chess; and from Rouen he reduced the great castle in
six weeks. One thing more he did there, which gave Gaston a clue to his
mood. He sent a present of money, a great sum, to an old priest, curate
of Saint-Sulpice; and when they told him that the man was dead, and a
great part of the church he had served burnt out by King Philip, his
face grew bleak and withered, and he said, 'Then I will burn Philip
out.' He had Gisors, castle, churches, burgher-holds, the whole town,
burned level with the ground. There was not