If Austria had murdered him then, it had perhaps been well; but his enemies being silenced, his friends did enemies’ work unknowing, by giving him scope to mar himself.  The ransom was raised at the price of blood and prayers, the ransom was paid.  The Earl of Leicester and Bishop of Salisbury brought it; so the Leopard was loosed.  With a quick shake of the head, as if doing violence to himself, he turned his face westward and pushed through the Low Countries to the sea.  There he was met by his English peers, by Longchamp, by his brother of Rouen, by men who loved and men who feared; but he had no word for any.  Grim and hungry he stalked through the lane they made him, on to the galley; folded in his cloak there, lonely he paced the bridge.  He was rowed to the west with his eyes fixed always on the east, away from his kingdom to where he supposed his longing to be.  His mother met him at Dunwich:  it seemed he knew her not.  ‘My son, my son Richard,’ she said as she knelt to him.  ‘Get up, Madame,’ he bid her; ‘I have work to do.’  He rode savagely to London through the grey Essex flats; had himself crowned anew; went north with a force to lay Lincolnshire waste; levelled castles, exacted relentless punishment, exorbitant tribute, the last acquittance.  He set a red smudge over the middle of England, being altogether in that country three months, a total to his name and reign of a poor six.  Then he left it for good and all, carrying away with him grudging men and grudged money, and leaving behind the memory of a stone face which always looked east, a sword, a heart aloof, the myth of a giant knight who spoke no English and did no charity, but was without fear, cruelly just, and as cold as an outland grave.  If you ask an Englishman what he thinks of Richard Yea-and-Nay, he will tell you:—­That was a king without pity or fear or love, considering neither God, nor the enemy of God, nor unhappy men.  If the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the love of Him is the end of it.  How could King Richard love God, who did not fear enough; or we, who feared too much?

He crossed into Normandy, and at Honfleur was met by them who loved him well; but he repaid them ill.  Here also they seemed remote from his acquaintance.  Gaston of Bearn, with eyes alight, came dancing down the quay, to be the first to kiss him.  Richard, shaking with fever (or what was like fever), gave him a burning dry hand, but looked away from him, always hungrily to the east.  Des Barres, who had thrown off allegiance for his love, got no thanks for it.  He may have known Abbot Milo again, or Mercadet, his lean good captain:  he said nothing to either of them.  His friends were confounded:  here was the gallant shell of King Richard with a new insatiable tenant.  So indeed they found it.  There was great business to be done:  war, the holding of Assise, the redressing of wrongs from the sea to the Pyrenees.  He did it, but in a terrible, hasty way.  It appeared that every formal act