women) to find pleasure in pain.  ’Let him deny me, let him deny me thrice, even as Thou wert denied, sweet Lord Jesus!’ she prayed to Christ on the wall.  ’So denied, Thou didst not cease from loving.  I think the woman in Thee outcried the man.’  She got a piercing bliss out of each new knife stuck in her little jumping heart.  Once or twice she wrote to Alois of France, who was at Fontevrault, in her King’s country.  ‘Dear lady,’ she wrote, ’they seek to enrage my lord against me.  If you see him, tell him that I believe nothing that I hear until I receive the word from his own glorious mouth.’  Alois, chilly in her cell, took no steps to get speech with King Richard.  ‘Let her suffer:  I suffer,’ she would say.  And then, curiously jealous lest more pain should be Berengere’s than was hers, a daughter’s of France, she made haste to send assuring messages to Cahors.  Still Berengere sweetly agonised.  Saint-Pol sent her letters full of love and duty, enthusiastic, breathing full arms against her wrongs.  But she always replied, ’Count of Saint-Pol, you do me injury in seeking to redress your own.  I admit nothing against my lord the King.  Many hate him, but I love him.  My will is to be meek.  Meekness would become you very well also.’  Saint-Pol could not think so.

Lastly came the intelligence that King Richard in person was moving south with a great force to win the treasure of Chaluz.  The news was true.  Not only did he dwell with the nervous persistency of the afflicted upon the wretched gold Caesar, but with clearer political vision saw a chance of subduing all Aquitaine.  ’Any stick will do, even Adhemar of Limoges,’ he said, not suspecting Saint-Pol’s finger in the dish; and told Mercadet to summon the knights, and the knights their array.  Before he set out he sent two messengers more—­one to Rome, and one much further east.  Then he began his warlike preparations with great heart.

CHAPTER XV

OECONOMIC REFLECTIONS OF THE OLD MAN OF MUSSE

Jehane, called Gulzareen, the Golden Rose, had borne three children to the Old Man of Musse.  She was suckling the third, and teaching her eldest, the young Fulke of Anjou, his Creed, or as much of it as she could remember, when there came up a herald from Tortosa who bore upon his tabard the three leopards of England.  He delivered a sealed letter thus superscribed—­

’La tres-haulte et ma tres chere dame, Madame Jehane, Comtesse d’Anjou, de la part le Roy Richard.  Hastez tousjours.’

The letter was brought to the Old Man as he sat in his white hail among his mutes.

‘Fulness of Light,’ said the Vizier, after prostrations, ’here is come a letter from the Melek Richard, sealed, for her Highness the Golden Rose.’

‘Give it to me, Vizier,’ said the Old Man, and broke the seal, and read—­

’Madame, most dear lady, in a very little while I shall be free from my desperate nets; and then you shall be freed from yours.  Keep a great heart.  After five years of endeavour at last I come quickly.—­Richard of Anjou.’