And leave this place, or die, if you remain.” “Fool!” cried the Prince, “I curse thee from this day.” Then to the Caliph: “Slay my daughter, slay. Strike quickly, lest some evil chance to you. My daughter kill.” His sword the Caliph drew, And struck—but not fair Ivorine. The blade Smote down the wrathful Prince, and spared the maid. “Right well,” cried Poliban, “hast thou obeyed.” Footnote 61: Le Vieux de la Montagne. CHAPTER X. KING FULKE. A.D. 1131-1144. “I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting.” _King Lear._ Fulke, Count of Anjou, born about the year 1092, was thirty-nine years of age at the time when his father-in-law died, and he became, with his wife Milicent, the successor to the throne. He was a man of affable and generous disposition, patient and prudent rather than impetuous, and of great experience and judgment in military operations. He was of small stature—all the previous kings had been tall men—and had red hair; “in spite of which,” says William of Tyre, who regarded red-haired men with suspicion, “the Lord found him, like David, after his own heart.” The principal defect in him was that he had no memory. He forgot faces, persons, and promises. He would entertain a man one day in the most friendly spirit possible, making all kinds of offers of assistance, and giving him to understand that he was entirely devoted to his interests. The next day he would meet him and ask people who he was, having meanwhile quite forgotten all about him. This was sometimes extremely embarrassing, and “many men who reckoned on their familiar relations with the king fell into confusion, reflecting that they themselves, who wanted to show as protectors and patrons to other people, required a patron with the king.”