lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat--who
knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change
you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and
you shall never be able to guess the hue of his inmost vestments
from their outward colours. A man-at-arms? Ay, a fine figure on
horseback, and can bear him well in the tilt-yard, and at the
barriers, when swords are blunted at point and edge, and spears
are tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel pikes. Wert
thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here we
be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a
band of some threescore Saracens--what say you to charge them
briskly? There are but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each
true knight."

"I recollect the Marquis replied," said De Vaux, "that his limbs
were of flesh, not of iron, and that he would rather bear the
heart of a man than of a beast, though that beast were the lion,
But I see how it is--we shall end where we began, without hope of
praying at the Sepulchre until Heaven shall restore King Richard
to health."

At this grave remark Richard burst out into a hearty fit of
laughter, the first which he had for some time indulged in. "Why
what a thing is conscience," he said, "that through its means
even such a thick-witted northern lord as thou canst bring thy
sovereign to confess his folly! It is true that, did they not
propose themselves as fit to hold my leading-staff, little should
I care for plucking the silken trappings off the puppets thou
hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me what fine
tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as