divert his exertions from the recovery of the Holy Land--what
thinks your Majesty of the Master as a general leader of the
Christian host?"

"Ha, Beau-Seant?" answered the King. "Oh, no exception can be
taken to Brother Giles Amaury; he understands the ordering of a
battle, and the fighting in front when it begins. But, Sir
Thomas, were it fair to take the Holy Land from the heathen
Saladin, so full of all the virtues which may distinguish
unchristened man, and give it to Giles Amaury, a worse pagan than
himself, an idolater, a devil-worshipper, a necromancer, who
practises crimes the most dark and unnatural in the vaults and
secret places of abomination and darkness?"

"The Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem is
not tainted by fame, either with heresy or magic," said Thomas de
Vaux.

"But is he not a sordid miser?" said Richard hastily; "has he
not been suspected--ay, more than suspected--of selling to the
infidels those advantages which they would never have won by fair
force? Tush, man, better give the army to be made merchandise of
by Venetian skippers and Lombardy pedlars, than trust it to the
Grand Master of St. John."

"Well, then, I will venture but another guess," said the Baron de
Vaux. "What say you to the gallant Marquis of Montserrat, so
wise, so elegant, such a good man-at-arms?"

"Wise?--cunning, you would say," replied Richard; "elegant in a