The Archduke came daily to him with speeches, injuries to relate, injuries to impart.  King Richard hardly winked an eyelid.  The Archduke hinted at ransom, and Richard watched the wall behind his head; he spoke of letters received from this great man or that, which made ransom not to be thought of; and Richard went to sleep.  What are you to do with a man who meets your offers and threats with the same vast unconcern?  If it is matter for resentment, Richard gave it; if it is a matter which money may leaven, it is to be observed that while Richard offered no money his enemies offered much.

These letters to the Archduke were not of the sort which fill the austere folios of the Codex Diplomaticus as bins with bran, or make Rymer’s book as dry as Ezekiel’s valley.  They were pungent, pertinent, allusive, succinct, supplementing, as with meat, those others.  The Count of Saint-Pol wrote, for instance, ’Kinsman, kill the killer of your kin,’ and could hardly have expressed himself better under the circumstances.  King Philip of France sent two letters:  one by a herald, very long, and chiefly in the language of the Epistle of Saint James, designed for the Codex.  The other lay in the vest of a Savigniac monk, and was to this effect:  ’In a ridded acre the husbandman can sow with hopes of good harvesting.  When the corn is garnered he calleth about him his friends and fellow-labourers, and cheer abounds.  Labour and pray.  I pray.’  Last came a limping pilgrim from Aquitaine, whose hat was covered with metal saints, and in his left shoe a wad of parchment, which had made him limp.  This proved to be a letter from John Count of Mortain, which said, ’Now I see in secret.  But when I am come into my kingdom I will reward openly.’  The Archduke was by no means a wise man; but it was not easy to know something of European politics and mistake the meaning of letters like these.  If it was a question of money, here was money.  And imagine now the Archduke, bursting with the urgent secrets of so many princes, making speeches about them—­through all of which King Richard slumbered!  ‘Damn it, he flouts me, does he?’ said Austria at last; and left him alone.  From that moment Richard began to sing.

Let us do no wrong to Luitpold:  it was not merely a question of money, but money turned the scale.  Not only had Richard mortally affronted his gaoler; he had innumerably offended him.  The Archduke was punctilious; Richard with his petulant foot stamped on every little point he laboured, or else, like a buttress, let him labour them in vain.  He did not for a moment disguise his fatigue in Luitpold’s presence, his relief at his absence, or his unconcern with his properties.  This galled the man.  He could not, for the life of him, affect indifference to Richard’s indifference.  When the messenger, therefore, arrived from the Old Man of Musse, the insolence of the message was most unfortunate.  The Archduke, angry as he was, could afford to be cool.  He played on the Old Man the very part which Richard had played on him—­that is, treated him and his letter as though they were not.