The old man had been the confessor of Henry II., but won by the cordial frankness and generous impulses of Coeur de Lion, he availed himself of every opportunity afforded by his intimacy with Henry to forward the interests of the young prince. The king had confided to the priest, as his spiritual father, his attachment to the fair and frail Alice of France; and the monk had betrayed the secret of the confessional to Prince Richard. By a law of Henry I., all priests guilty of this crime were condemned to perpetual wandering, and Richard, in his first agony and remorse, at the death of his father, caused the penalty to be strictly enforced. The poor monk, therefore, had for nearly twenty years practised a weary pilgrimage from one holy place to another, resting in monasteries, walking unshod before shrines of peculiar sanctity, and kneeling or watching in every cave or hermitage where the hallowed remains of a saint might be supposed to avail for his absolution. Pursued thus by the furies of remorse, and the curses of the church, he had visited the shrines of St. Wulstan, St. Dunstan, St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. James of Compostella, the crucifix of Lucca, the congregated Saints at Rome, the cave of St. Cyprian in Africa, and had now come to pray God to release his soul at the church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the mention of St. James of Compostella, Elsiebede seemed agitated, and when the monk ceased his story, she anxiously inquired whether in his travels through Spain, he had rested in Pampeluna. "I tarried there some days," returned the pilgrim, "but it is several years since, and but for a strange circumstance it might have faded from my memory; for he who thinks ever upon his own sins has little leisure to study that which pleases or benefits others." "Relate to me this circumstance," cried Elsiebede, eagerly. "As I knelt at high mass," resumed the priest, "a noble lady, closely veiled, bowed at the altar by my side. When the solemn ceremony was over, and she rose to depart, an attendant whispered me to follow. She led the way to her oratory in the palace of the king, where she showed me that she was the widow of my deceased lord, Richard Coeur de Lion." "My dear lady Berengaria," exclaimed Elsiebede, the tears falling from her eyes like rain.