“I offer you no contradiction, Sirrah Red Dragon,” said the Countess Sylvia with her bearing of beautiful disdain, and with I know not how many generations of statecraft in her glance. The English giant caused the board to groan with a blow from his great hand. “By this hand!” he said, “your mind is a good one, madam. You are young and a female and you live in Spain, but you have a good mind. It is I suppose that even in Spain the blood of kings confers an especial nobility. Richard Pendragon, knight of Great Britain, of the Welsh Marches and the Island of Manx, is in accordance with you. The hour strikes; your nephew France must pluck his crow with the Castilian.” “Sir Richard Pendragon,” said the Count of Nullepart, “your speaking is choice, yet what if by a strange mischance the good France hath not heard the striking of the hour?” Madam silenced the Count of Nullepart with her imperious glance. “We will send an embassy,” said she. “This very day we will send an embassy to Paris.” This high resolution of madam’s was received with instant favour by her councillors. Sir Richard Pendragon acclaimed it as the flower of wisdom; the Count of Nullepart gave it the accomplished and mature sanction of one who had moved much in the world; while I, who in years and merit was not the peer of these gentlemen, yet gave it the approbation of blood as honourable as any to be found in Spain. A scrivener was called immediately to set in writing the proposal of the Countess Sylvia to her nephew France. First assuring her nephew of her personal affection for him, and a great interest in the prosperity of his affairs (a suggestion of the Count of Nullepart, who seemed highly versed in these documents), she proceeded in the language of diplomacy, in which the count continued to discover no little skill, to ask the immediate aid of four thousand men-at-arms in order that she might defend her heritage from a common enemy. When this document was duly drawn up in folio, and the Count of Nullepart read aloud in his beautiful voice the terms which had been choicely expressed, and madam, with the air of one who held an empire within the palm of her small right hand, appended her signature with great difficulty, after twice consulting the scrivener as to the fashion of spelling her baptismal name, that it might accord with the practice of the most learned and best found minds of the age--“Because,” as she said, “if we use an ‘i’ when a ‘y’ is considered more modish, our nephew may believe we are more rustic here at Montesina than they are at Paris”--after this had been accomplished and the great ducal seal had been appended, a controversy arose among her ministers as to whose should be the honour of conveying it to its destination.