"GUY DE CAVAILLON TO THE COUNT OF TOULOUSE. "Tell me, Count, if you would rather Owe your lands and castles high To the Pope, our holy father, Or to sacred chivalry? Were it best a knight and noble Conquer'd by his sword alone, Bearing heat, and cold, and trouble, By his arm to gain his own?" "ANSWER OF COUNT RAYMOND TO GUY DE CAVAILLON. "Guy, much sooner would I gain All by valour and my sword, Than by other means obtain What no honour can afford. Church nor clergy I despise, Neither fear them, as you know; But no towers or castles prize Which their hands alone bestow: Holding honour above all Gifts or conquests, great or small." The evening was drawing in too much by the time we reached that part of the shore, where the few walls of the once stupendous château of the Lusignans appear, and we could see nothing but the shadow--it might be of the wings of the fairy, Melusine, hovering in the dim light over this, one of her numerous castles. Here lived and contended Hugues de Lusignan, Counte de la Marche, who had married his first love, the beautiful Isabeau d'Angoulême, widow of King John of England; whose effigy so delighted me at Fontevraud, lying beside that of her brother-in-law, Coeur de Lion.[17] But, if that lovely face and delicate form truly represented the princess, her character is singularly at variance with her gentle demeanour. She was the most imperious, restlessly proud, and vindictive woman of her time, and kept up a constant warfare with her husband and the King of France; to whom she could not endure that the Count de Lusignan should be considered a vassal. "I," she cried, "the widow of a king! the mother of a king and an empress! am, then, to be reduced to take rank after a simple countess! to do homage to a count!" This was on the occasion of the marriage of the brother of Louis IX., with Jeanne, Countess and heiress of Toulouse, to whom the Count of Lusignan owed homage. "No," she continued, with indignant fury, "you shall not commit so cowardly an action: resist: my son, and my son-in-law, will come to your aid. I will raise the people of Poitou--my allies, my vassals--and, if they are not enough, I have power alone to save you from such disgrace." Hugues, thus excited, agreed to follow her counsel; and a long struggle ensued, sometimes attended with triumph to the haughty countess, sometimes with discomfiture; and ending by the ruin of her husband and children, and the confiscation of much of their domains to the crown of France. This was she to whom the troubadour count addressed these lines, amongst others: "So full of pleasure is my pain, To me my sorrow is so dear, That, not the universe to gain Would I exchange a single tear.