,
as Richard was engaged in reducing the castle of Chaluz, the stronghold
of one of his Aquitanian vassals, Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, who it
seems had refused to surrender a treasure found on his estate, to which
the king laid claim in right of his feudal superiority, Coeur de Lion
was struck in the left shoulder by an arrow, aimed from the rampart of
the castle by a youth named Bertrand de Gurdun. The wound would not have
been dangerous but for the mismanagement of the surgeon in his attempts
to extract the arrow-head, which had broken off in the flesh. As it was,
Richard lived only till Tuesday, April 16th. The shot was a fatal one in
every way; in the fury into which the wound of the king threw the
besieging army the castle was taken by storm, and all the persons found
in it were immediately hanged, as some authorities say, by the king's
orders, with the exception only of Gurdun. He was brought into the
presence of his dying victim, when Richard, under the impulse of
generosity or compunction, gave him his liberty, with a hundred
shillings to take him home; but after the king's death he was flayed
alive, and then hanged, by order of Marchadee, the leader of the
Brabantine mercenaries serving in Richard's army.

The character of Richard is, of course, not to be judged without
reference to the general manners of the age in which he lived. It is
probable enough that there was hardly an excess, either of violence or
licentiousness, into which his impetuous temperament did not
occasionally precipitate him; but he seems to have had nothing base or
malignant in his composition; and that he was as capable of acts of
extraordinary generosity and disinterestedness as of excesses of brutal
fury or profligacy. Of the courage and strength of will proper to his
race, he had his full share, with more than his share of their strength
of thew and sinew; and his intellectual powers, both natural and
acquired, were also of a high order. He was renowned in his own day not
only as beyond all dispute the stoutest and most gallant of living
heroes, but as likewise occupying a place in the foremost rank of those
who excelled in wit, in eloquence, and in song.

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI[6]

[Footnote 6: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP, LL.D.

(1182-1226)

[Illustration: St. Francis of Assisi.]

One reason why those beings who are known to us as saints are so little
understood is, that th