It was on the decline of a Syrian day that Richard lay on his
couch of sickness, loathing it as much in mind as his illness
made it irksome to his body. His bright blue eye, which at all
times shone with uncommon keenness and splendour, had its
vivacity augmented by fever and mental impatience, and glanced
from among his curled and unshorn locks of yellow hair as
fitfully and as vividly as the last gleams of the sun shoot
through the clouds of an approaching thunderstorm, which still,
however, are gilded by its beams. His manly features showed the
progress of wasting illness, and his beard, neglected and
untrimmed, had overgrown both lips and chin. Casting himself
from side to side, now clutching towards him the coverings, which
at the next moment he flung as impatiently from him, his tossed
couch and impatient gestures showed at once the energy and the
reckless impatience of a disposition whose natural sphere was
that of the most active exertion.

Beside his couch stood Thomas de Vaux, in face, attitude, and
manner the strongest possible contrast to the suffering monarch.
His stature approached the gigantic, and his hair in thickness
might have resembled that of Samson, though only after the
Israelitish champion's locks had passed under the shears of the
Philistines, for those of De Vaux were cut short, that they might
be enclosed under his helmet. The light of his broad, large
hazel eye resembled that of the autumn morn; and it was only
perturbed for a moment, when from time to time it was attracted
by Richard's vehement marks of agitation and restlessness. His
features, though massive like his person, might have been
handsome before they were defaced with scars; his upper lip,