‘as if I cared for that!’ said Berenger, beginning his caged-tiger walk again, and, though he tried to repress his anguish, breaking out at times into fierce revilings of the cruel toils that beset him, and despairing lamentations over those beloved ones at home, with sobs, groans, and tears, such as Philip could not brook to witness.  Both because they were so violent and mourn-full, and because he thought them womanish, though in effect no woman’s grief could have had half that despairing force.  The fierte of the French noble, however, came to his aid.  At the first sound of the great supper-bell he dashed away his tears, composed his features, washed his face, and demanded haughtily of Philip, whether there were any traces in his looks that the cruel hypocrite, their jailer, could gloat over.

And with proud step and indifferent air he marched into the hall, answered the Chevalier’s polite inquiry whether the letter had brought good tidings by coolly thanking him and saying that all at home were well; and when he met the old man’s inquiring glance out of the little keen black bead in the puckered, withered eyelid, he put a perfectly stony unmeaningness into his own gaze, till his eyes looked like the blue porcelain from China so much prized by the Abbess.  He even played at chess all the evening with such concentrated attention as to be uniformly victorious.

Yet half the night Philip heard suppressed moans and sobs—­then knew that he was on his knees—­then, after long and comparatively silent weeping, he lay down again, and from the hour when he awoke in the morning, he returned no more to the letters; and though for some little time more sad and dispirited, he seemed to have come to regard the misjudgment at home as a part of the burthen he was already bearing.

That burthen was, however, pressing more heavily.  The temperaments of the two brothers so differed that while the French one was prostrated by the agony of a stroke, and then rallied patiently to endure the effects, the English character opposed a passive resistance to the blow, gave no sign of grief or pain, and from that very determination suffered a sort of exhaustion that made the effects of the evil more and more left.  Thus, from the time Philip’s somewhat tardy imagination had been made to realize his home, his father, and his sisters, the home-sickness, and weariness of his captivity, which had already begun to undermine his health and spirits, took increasing effect.

He made no complaint—­he never expressed a wish—­but, in the words of the prophet, he seemed ‘pining away on his feet.’  He did not sleep, and though, to avoid remark, he never failed to appear at meals, he scarcely tasted food.  He never willingly stirred from cowering over the fire, and was so surly and ill-tempered that only Berenger’s unfailing good-humour could have endured it.  Even a wolf-hunt did not stir him.  He only said he hated outlandish beasts,