He had naturally brought no breaching guns with him, because those instruments were not yet invented:  and though he had assaulted the place a score of times with the utmost fury, his Majesty had been beaten back on every occasion, until he was so savage that it was dangerous to approach the British Lion.  The Lion’s wife, the lovely Berengaria, scarcely ventured to come near him.  He flung the joint-stools in his tent at the heads of the officers of state, and kicked his aides-de-camp round his pavilion; and, in fact, a maid of honor, who brought a sack-posset in to his Majesty from the Queen after he came in from the assault, came spinning like a football out of the royal tent just as Ivanhoe entered it.

“Send me my drum-major to flog that woman!” roared out the infuriate King.  “By the bones of St. Barnabas she has burned the sack!  By St. Wittikind, I will have her flayed alive.  Ha, St. George! ha, St. Richard! whom have we here?” And he lifted up his demi-culverin, or curtal-axe—­a weapon weighing about thirteen hundredweight—­and was about to fling it at the intruder’s head, when the latter, kneeling gracefully on one knee, said calmly, “It is I, my good liege, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe.”

“What, Wilfrid of Templestowe, Wilfrid the married man, Wilfrid the henpecked!” cried the King with a sudden burst of good-humor, flinging away the culverin from him, as though it had been a reed (it lighted three hundred yards off, on the foot of Hugo de Bunyon, who was smoking a cigar at the door of his tent, and caused that redoubted warrior to limp for some days after).  “What, Wilfrid my gossip?  Art come to see the lion’s den?  There are bones in it, man, bones and carcasses, and the lion is angry,” said the King, with a terrific glare of his eyes.  “But tush! we will talk of that anon.  Ho! bring two gallons of hypocras for the King and the good Knight, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe.  Thou art come in time, Wilfrid, for, by St. Richard and St. George, we will give a grand assault to-morrow.  There will be bones broken, ha!”

“I care not, my liege,” said Ivanhoe, pledging the sovereign respectfully, and tossing off the whole contents of the bowl of hypocras to his Highness’s good health.  And he at once appeared to be taken into high favor; not a little to the envy of many of the persons surrounding the King.

As his Majesty said, there was fighting and feasting in plenty before Chalus.  Day after day, the besiegers made assaults upon the castle, but it was held so stoutly by the Count of Chalus and his gallant garrison, that each afternoon beheld the attacking-parties returning disconsolately to their tents, leaving behind them many of their own slain, and bringing back with them store of broken heads and maimed limbs, received in the unsuccessful onset.  The valor displayed by Ivanhoe in all these contests was prodigious; and the way in which he escaped death from the discharges of mangonels, catapults, battering-rams, twenty-four