At this feast King Richard played a great part—­cheerful, easy of approach, making phrases like swords, giving and taking the talk without any advantage of his rank.  His jokes had a bite in them, as when he said of Bertran that the best proof of the excellence of his verses was that he had undoubtedly made them himself; or of Averrhoes, the Arabian physician and infidel philosopher, that the man equalised his harms by poisoning with his drugs the bodies of those whose minds had been tainted by his heresies.  But he was the first to set the laugh against himself, and had a flash of Dame Berengere’s fine teeth before he had been ten minutes at table.

After dinner the Kings and their ministers went into debate; and then it seemed that Richard had got up from his meat perverse.  He would only talk of one thing, namely, sixty thousand gold besants.  On this he harped maddeningly, with calculations of how much victual the sum would buy, of the weight in ounces, of its content in sacks in a barn, of the mileage of the coins set edge to edge, and so on, and so on.  Don Sancho sat winking and fidgeting in his chair, and talked of his illustrious daughter.

‘Milled edges they should have, these besants,’ says King Richard, ’whereof, allowing (say) three hundred and fifty to a piece, we have a surprising total of’—­here he figured on the table, and King Sancho pursued his drift until Richard brought his hand slamming down—­’of one-and-twenty million ridges of gold upon the treasure!’ he concluded with a waggish look.  Agreement was as hard as to prolong parallels to a point.  Yet this went on for some two hours, until, worn frail by such futilities, the Navarrese chancellor plumply asked his brother of England if King Richard would marry.  ‘Marry!’ cried he, when they brought him down the question, ’yes, I am all for marrying.  I will marry one-and-twenty million milled edges, our Saviour!’ They reported to King Sancho the substance of these words, and asked him if such and such would be the dowry of his lady daughter.

’Ask King Richard if he will have her with that in hand and the territories demarked,’ said Don Sancho.

This was done.  Richard grew grave, made no more jokes.  He turned to Milo, who happened to be near him.

‘Where is the little lady?’ he asked him.  Milo looked out of the window.

‘My lord,’ he said, ’she is in the orchard at this moment; and I think the Countess is with her.’  Richard blenched, as if he had been struck with a whip.  Collecting himself, he turned and looked down through the window to the leafy orchard below.  He looked long, and saw (as Milo had seen) the two girls, the tall and the little, the crimson and the white, standing near together in the shade.  Jehane had her head bent, for Berengere had hold of the jewel in her bosom.  Then Berengere put her arms round the other’s neck and leaned her head where the jewel lay.  Jehane stooped her head lower and lower, cheek touched cheek.  At this King Richard turned about; despair set hard was on his face.  He said in a dry voice, ‘Tell the King I will do it.’