He went to the Prince with a crucifix in his hand, and
entreated him not to imitate Absalom.

"What!" exclaimed the Prince, "would you have me renounce my
birthright?"

"God forbid!" answered the holy man; "I wish you to do nothing to your
own injury."

"You do not understand my words," said Geoffrey; "it is our family
fate not to love one another. 'T is our inheritance; and not one of us
will ever forego it."

That must have been a pleasant family to marry into! When the King's
eldest son, Henry, died, regretting his sins against his father,
that father durst not visit him, fearing treachery; and the immediate
occasion of the King's death was the discovery of the hostility of his
son John, who, being the worst of his children, was, of course, the
best-beloved of them all. The story was, that, when Richard entered
the Abbey of Fontevraud, in which his father's body lay, the corpse
bled profusely, which was held to indicate that the new king was his
father's murderer. Richard was very penitent, as his elder brother
Henry had been, on his death-bed. They were very sorrowful, were those
Plantagenet princes, when they had been guilty of atrocious acts,
and when it was too late for their repentance to have any practical
effect.

Richard I. had no children, and so he could not get up a perfect
family-quarrel, though he and his brother John were enemies. He died
at forty-two, and but a few years after his marriage with Berengaria
of Navarre, an English queen who never was in England. When on his
death-bed, Richard was advised by the Bishop of Rouen to repent, and
to separate himself from his children. "I have no children," the King
answered. But the good priest told him that he had children, and that
they were avarice, luxury, and pride. "True," said Richard, who was
a humorist,--"and I leave my avarice to the Cistercians, my luxury
to the Gray Friars, and my pride to the Templars." History has fewer
sharper sayings than this, every word of which told like a cloth-yard
shaft sent against a naked bosom. Richard certainly never quarrelled
with the children whom he thus left to his _friends_.

King John did not live long enough to illustrate the family character
by fighting with his children. When he died, in 1216, his eldest son,
Henry III., was but nine years old, and even a Plantagenet could not
well fall out with a son of that immature age. However, John did his
best to make his mark on his time. If he could not quar