Well may the respectable Abbot Milo despond over this affair.  Hear him, and conceive how he shook his head.  ‘O too great power of princes,’ he writes, ’lodged in a room too frail!  O wagging bladder that serves as cushion for a crown!  O swayed by idle breath, seeming god that yet is a man, man driven by windy passion, that has yet to ape the god’s estate!  Because Richard craved this French girl, therefore he must take her, as it were, from the lap of her mother.  Because he taught her his nobility, which is the mere wind in a prince’s nose, she taught him nobility again.  Then because a prince must not be less noble than his nobles (but always primus inter pares), he, seeing her nobly disposed, gave her over to a man of her own choosing; and immediately after, unable to bear it that a common person should have what he had touched, took her away again, doing slaughter to get her, to say nothing of outrage in the church.  Last of all, as you are now to hear, thinking that too much handling was dishonour to the thin vessel of her body, touched on the generous spot, he made bad worse; he added folly to force; he made a marriage where none could be; he made immortal enmities, blocked up appointed roads, and set himself to walk others with a clog on his leg.  Better far had she been a wanton of no account, a piece of dalliance, a pastime, a common delight!  She was very much other than that.  Dame Jehane was a good girl, a noble girl, a handsome girl of inches and bright blood; but by the Lord God of Israel (Who died on the Tree), these virtues cost her dear.’

All this, we may take it, is true; the pity is that the thing promised so fair.  Those who had not known Jehane before were astonished at her capacity, discretion, and dignity.  She had a part to play at Le Mans, where Richard kept his Easter, which would have taxed a wiser head.  She moved warily, a poor thing of gauze, amid those great lights.  King Philip had a tender nose; a very whiff of offence might have drawn blood.  Prince John had a shrewd eye and an evil way of using it; he stroked women, but they seldom liked it, and never found good come of it.  The Duke of Burgundy ate and drank too much.  He resembled a sponge, when empty too rough a customer, when full too juicy.  It was on one of the days when he was very full that, tilting at the ring, he won, or said he won, forty pounds of Richard.  Empty, he claimed them, but Richard discerned a rasp in his manner of asking, and laughed at him.  The Duke of Burgundy took this ill.  He was never quite the same to Richard again; but he made great friends with Prince John.