‘Upon that day,’ to quote the mellifluous abbot, ’Upon that day when in leaping tongues the Spirit of God sat upon the heads of the Holy Apostles, and gave letters to the unlettered and to the speechless Its own nature, Count Richard wedded Dame Jehane, and afterwards crowned her Countess with his own hands.

’They put her, crying bitterly, into the Count’s bed in the Castle of Poictiers on the evening of the same feast.  Weeping also, but at a later day, I saw her crowned again at Angers with the Count’s cap of Anjou.  So to right her and himself Count Richard did both the greatest wrong of all.’

Much more pageantry followed the marriage.  I admire Milo’s account.  ’He held a tournament after this, when the Count and the party of the castle maintained the field against all corners.  There was great jousting for six days, I assure you; for I saw the whole of it.  No English knights were there, nor any from Anjou; but a few French (without King Philip’s goodwill), many Gascons and men of Toulouse and the Limousin; some from over the mountains, from Navarre, and Santiago, and Castile; there also came the Count of Champagne with his friends.  King Sancho of Navarre was excessively friendly, with a gift of six white stallions, all housed, for Dame Jehane; nobody knew why or wherefore at the time, except Bertran de Born (O thief unrepentant!).

’Countess Jehane, with her ladies, being set in a great balcony of red and white roses, herself all in rose-coloured silk with a chaplet of purple flowers, the first day came Count Richard in green armour and a surcoat of the same embroidered with a naked man, a branch of yellow broom in his helm.  None held up against him that day; the Duke of Burgundy fell and brake his collar-bone.  The second day he drove into the melee suddenly, when there was a great press of spears, all in red with a flaming sun on his breast.  He sat a blood-horse of Spain, bright chestnut colour and housed in red.  Then, I tell you, we saw horses and men sunder their loves.  The third day Pedro de Vaqueiras, a knight from Santiago, encountered him in his silver armour, when he rode a horse white as the Holy Ghost.  By a chance blow the Spaniard bore him back on to the crupper.  There was a great shout, “The Count is down!  Look to the castle, Poictou!” Dame Jehane turned colour of ash, for she remembered the leper’s prophecy, and knew that De Vaqueiras loved her.  But Richard recovered himself quickly, crying, “Have at you again, Don Pedro.”  So they brought fresh spears, and down went De Vaqueiras on his back, his horse upon him.  To be plain, not Hector raging over the field with shouts for Achilles, nor flamboyant Achilles spying after Hector, nor Hannibal at Cannae, Roland in the woody pass of Roncesvalles, nor the admired Lancelot, nor Tristram dreadful in the Cornish isle—­not one of these heroes was more gloriously mighty than Count Richard.  Like the war-horse of Job (the prophet and afflicted man) he stamped with his foot and said among the captains “ha ha!” His nostrils scented the battle from very far off; he set on like the quarrell of a bow, and gathering force as he went, came rocking into his adversary like galley against galley.  With all this he was gentle, had a pleasant laugh.  It was good to be struck down by such a man, if it ever can be good.  He bore away opposition as he bore away the knights.’