If one half of this were true, and no man in steel could withstand him, how could circumstance, how could she, this slim and frightened girl?  Mad indeed with love and pride, quite beside herself, she forgot for once her tremors and qualms.  On the last day she fell panting upon his breast; and he, a great lover, kissed her before them all, and lifted her high in his hands.  ‘Oyez, my lords!’ he cried with a mighty voice, ‘Is this a lovely wife I have won, or not?’ They answered him with a shout.

He took her a progress about his country afterwards.  From Poictiers they went to Limoges, thence westward to Angoulesme, and south to Perigueux, to Bazas, to Cahors, Agen, even to Dax, which is close to the country of the King of Navarre.  Wherever he led her she was hailed with joy.  Young girls met her with flowers in their hands, wise men came kneeling, offering the keys of their towns; the youth sang songs below her balcony, the matrons made much of her and asked her searching questions.  They saw in her a very superb and handsome Duchess, Jehane of the Fair Girdle, now acclaimed in the soft syllables of Aquitaine as Bel Vezer.  When they were at Dax the wise King of Navarre sent ambassadors beseeching from them a visit to his city of Pampluna; but Richard would not go.  Then they came back to Poictiers and shocking news.  This was of the death of King Henry of England, the old lion, ’dead (Milo is bold to say) in his sin.’

CHAPTER XII

HOW THEY BAYED THE OLD LION

I must report what happened to the King of England when (like a falcon foiled in his stoop) he found himself outpaced and outgeneralled on the moor.  Shaken off by those he sought to entrap, baited by the badger he hoped to draw, he took on something not to be shaken off, namely death, and had drawn from him what he would ill spare, namely the breath of his nostrils.  To have done with all this eloquence, he caught a chill, which, working on a body shattered by rages and bad living, smouldered in him—­a slow-eating fever which bit him to the bones, charred and shrivelled him up.  In the clutches of this crawling disease he joined his forces with those of his Marshal, and marched to the relief of Le Mans, where the French King was taking his ease.  Philip fired the place when he heard of his approach; so Henry got near enough to see the sky throbbing with red light, and over all a cloud of smoke blacker than his own despair.  It is said that he had a fit of hard sobbing when he saw this dreadful sight.  He would not suffer the host to approach the burning city, but took to his bed, turned his face to the tent-wall, and refused alike housel and meat.  News, and of the worst, came fast.  The French were at Chateaudun, the Countess of Brittany’s men were threatening Anjou from the north; all Touraine with Saumur and a chain of border castles were subject to Richard his son.  These things he heard without moving from his bed or opening his eyes.