se entrenchments.

Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the
recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away
by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to
Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as
afterward at Agincourt.

But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for
discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent
into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience of
King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the war
inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day of
Palm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, an
interview with Queen Jehane.[*]

[*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French
wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--although
this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his
chronicle.]

A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by
prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted by
the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had gone
she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordless
cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said.

His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging
now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes;
but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained
hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a
thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he
most despised.

She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, and
Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a little, Jehane
paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment as a bright leopardess
might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. "Friend, I think that God
Himself has deigned to avenge you. All misery my reign has been. First
Hotspur, then prim Worcester harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to
prick us with his devils' horns. Followed the dreary years that linked
me to the rotting corpse which God's leprosy devoured while the poor
furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of
Manuel's poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live beneath
a sword."

"You have earned no more," he said. "You have earned no more, O
Jehane! whose only title