After a week of this misery two of his lords, the Marshal, namely, and Bishop Hugh of Durham, came to his bedside and told him, ’Sire, here are come ambassadors from France speaking of a peace.  How shall it be?’

‘As you will,’ said the King; ‘only let me sleep.’  He spoke drowsily, as if not really awake, but it is thought that he was more watchful than he chose to appear.

They held a hasty conference, Geoffrey his bastard, the Marshal, the Bishop:  these and the French ambassadors.  On the King’s part they made but one request; and Geoffrey made that.  The King was dying:  let him be taken down to his castle of Chinon, not die in the fields like an old hunting dog.  This was allowed.  He took no sort of notice, let them do what they would with him, slept incessantly all the way to Chinon.

They brought him the parchments, sealed with his great seal; and he, quite broken, set his hand to them without so much as a curse on the robbery done his kingdom.  But as the bearers were going out on tiptoe he suddenly sat up in bed.  ‘Hugh,’ he grumbled, ’Bishop Hugh, come thou here.’  The Bishop turned back eagerly, for those two had loved each other in their way, and knelt by his bed.

‘Read me the signatures to these damned things,’ said the King; and Hugh rejoiced that he was better, yet feared to make him worse.

‘Ah, dear sire,’ he began to say; but ‘Read, man,’ said the old King, jerking his foot under the bedclothes.  So Hugh the Bishop began to read them over, and the sick man listened with a shaky head, for by now the fever was running high.

‘Philip the August, King of the Franks,’ says the Bishop; and ’A dog’s name,’ the old King muttered in his throat.  ’Sanchez, Catholic King of Navarre,’ says Hugh; and ‘Name of an owl,’ King Henry.  To the same ground-bass he treated the themes of the illustrious Duke of Burgundy, Henry Count of Champagne, and others of the French party.  With these the Bishop would have stopped, but the King would have the whole.  ’Nay, Hugh,’ he said—­and his teeth chattered as if it had been bitter cold—­’out with the name of my beloved son.  So you shall see what joyful agreement there is in my house.’  The Bishop read the name of Richard Count of Poictou, and the King grunted his ‘Traitor from the womb,’ as he had often done before.

‘Who follows Richard?’ he asked.

‘Oh, our Lady, is he not enough, sire?’ said the Bishop in fear.  The old King sat bolt upright and steadied his head on his knees.  ‘Read,’ he said again.

‘I cannot read!’ cried Hugh with a groan.  The King said, ’You are a fool.  Give me the parchment.’