The French took Mans, and pillaged it cruelly, while Richard looked on in shame and grief at the desolation of his own inheritance. His father, weak and unwell, resolved to make peace, and for the last time appointed a meeting with Philippe on the plain between Tours and Amboise. There it was arranged that Richard should be acknowledged as heir, and Alice put into the hands of the Archbishop either of Canterbury or Rouen, as he should prefer, until he should return from the Crusade. The conference was interrupted by a vivid flash of lightning and a tremendous burst of thunder. To the evil conscience of the elder King it was the voice of avenging Heaven: he reeled in his saddle, and his attendants were forced to support him in their arms and carry him away. He travelled in a litter to Chinon, where his first son had deserted him, and there, while he lay dangerously ill, the treaty was sent to him to receive his signature, and the conditions read over to him. By one of them, those who had engaged in Richard’s party were to transfer their allegiance to him. “Who are they--the ungrateful traitors?” he asked. “Let me hear their names.” His secretary began the list: “John, Count of Mortagne.” “John!”--and the miserable father started up in his bed. “John! It cannot be true!--my heart, my beloved son! He whom I cherished beyond the rest--he for whose sake I have suffered all this--can he also have deserted me?” He was told it was too true. “Well,” said he, falling back on his bed, and turning his face from the light, “let the rest go as it will! I care not what becomes of me, or of the world!” He was roused in a few moments by the entrance of Richard, come, as a matter of form, to ratify the treaty by the kiss of peace. The King, without speaking, gave it with rigid sternness of countenance; but Richard, as he turned away, heard him mutter, “May I but live to be revenged on thee!” and when he was gone, the King burst out into such horrible imprecations against his two sons, that the faithful Geoffrey of Lincoln and the clergy of Canterbury, who attended him, were shocked, and one of the monks reminded him that such hasty words had occasioned the death of Becket. But he gnashed his teeth at them with fury. “I have been and I am your lord, traitors that ye are!” he cried. “Away with you! I’ll have none but trusty ones here.” The monks left him; but one, turning round, said boldly, “If the life and sufferings of the martyr Thomas were acceptable with God. He will do prompt justice on thy body.”