’But not strange doing, I think, on your part.  This has been going on, how long?’

Saint-Pol was stung.  ’Ah, it becomes you very ill to reproach me, my lord.’

‘I think it becomes me excellently,’ said Richard.  ’You have lied for a vile purpose; you have disgraced your name.  You seek to drive me by slander whither I may not go in honour.  You lie like a broker.  You are a shameful liar.’

No man could stand this from another, however great that other; and Saint-Pol was not a coward.  He looked up at his adversary, still white, but steady.

‘How then?’ he asked him, ’how then if I lie not, Count of Poictou?  And how if you know that I lie not?’

‘Then,’ said Richard, ‘you use insult, which is worse.’

Saint-Pol took off his glove of mail and flung it with a clatter on the floor.

‘Since it has come to this, my lord—­’ Richard spiked the glove with his sword, tossed it to the hammer-beams of the roof, and caught it as it fell.

‘It shall come nearer, Count, I take it.’  Thus he finished the other’s phrase, then stalked out of the Bishop’s house.  It was then and there that he wrote to Jehane that sixth letter, which she received:  ’I make war, but the cause is righteous.  Never misjudge me, Jehane.’

The end of it was a combat a outrance in the meads by the Loire, with all Tours on the walls to behold it.  Richard was quite frank about the part he proposed to himself.  ‘The man must die,’ he told the Dauphin of Auvergne, ’even though he have spoken the truth.  As to that I am not sure, I am not yet informed.  But he is not fit to live on any ground.  By these slanders of his he has disgraced the name and outraged the honour of the most lovely lady in the world, whose truest misfortune is to be his sister; by the same token I must punish him for the dignity of the lady I am (at present) designed to wed.  She is always the daughter of his liege-lord.  What!’—­he threw his head up—­’Is not a daughter of France worth a broken back?’

‘Tu-dieu, yes,’ says the Dauphin; ’but it is a stoutish back, Richard.  It is a back which ranks high.  Kings clap it familiarly.  Conrad of Montferrat calls it a cousin’s back.  The Emperor has embraced it at an Easter fair.’

‘I would as soon break Conrad’s back as his, Dauphin, believe me,’ Richard replied; ’but Conrad has said nothing.  And there is another reason.’

‘I have thought myself of a reason against it,’ the Dauphin said quickly, yet with a flutter of timidity.  ‘This man’s name is Saint-Pol.’

Richard grew bleak in a moment.  ‘That,’ he said, ’is why I shall kill him.  He seeks to drive us to marriage.  Injurious beast!  His name is Pandarus.’  Then he left the Dauphin and shut himself up until the day of battle.