The Frenchmen arrived at Louviers none too soon.  As well mix fire and ice as Poictevin with Norman or Angevin with Angevin.  The princes stalked about with claws out of velvet, the nobles bickered fiercely, and the men-at-arms did after their kind.  There was open fighting.  Gaston of Bearn picked a quarrel with John Botetort, and they fought it out with daggers in the fosse.  Then Count Richard took one of his brother’s goshawks and would not give it up.  Over the long body of that bird half a score noblemen engaged with swords; the Count of Poictou himself accounted for six, and ended by pommelling his brother into a red jelly.  There was a week or more of this, during which the old King hunted like a madman all day and revelled in gloomy vices all night.  Richard saw little of him and little of the lady of France.  She, a pale shade, flitted dismally out when evoked by the King, dismally in again at a nod from him.  Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about, looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard lecturing her on theology and the soul’s business in passionless monologue.  It was very far from gay.  As for her, Richard believed her melancholy mad; he himself grew fretful, irritable, most quarrelsome.  Thus it was that he first plundered and then punched his brother.

After that Prince John disappeared for a little to nurse his sores, and Richard got within fair speaking distance of Madame Alois.  In fact, she sent for him late one night when the King, as he knew, was away, munching the ashes of charred pleasure in some stews or other.  He obeyed the summons with a half-shrug.

They received him with consternation.  The distracted lady was in a chair, hugging herself; the Cluniac stood by, a mortified emblem; a scared woman or two fled behind the throne.  Madame Alois, when she saw who the visitor was, began to shake.

‘Oh, oh!’ she said in a whisper, ‘have you come to murder me, my lord?’

‘Why, Madame,’ Richard made haste to say, ’I would serve you any other way but that, and supposed I had the right.  But I came because you sent for me.’

She passed her hand once or twice over her face, as if to brush cobwebs away; one of the women made a piteous appeal of the eyes to Richard, who took no notice of it; the monk said something to himself in a low voice, then to the Count, ‘Madame is overwrought, my lord.’

‘Yes, you rascal,’ thought Richard; ‘your work.’  Aloud he said, ’I hope her Grace will give you leave to retire, sir.’  Madame hereupon waved her people away, and went on waving long after they had gone.  Thus she was alone with her future lord.  There was the wreck of fine beauty about her drawn race, beauty of the black-and-white, sheeted sort; but she looked as if she walked with ghosts.  Richard was very gentle with her.  He drew near, saying, ‘I grieve to see you thus, Madame’; but she stopped him with a question—­

‘They seek to have you marry me?’