There was nine years’ difference in age between Geoffrey and John; but already a clear-sighted onlooker could see that the two brothers were cast in the same mould, morally as well as physically. Both were short in stature--shorter than their father, and far below the height of young Henry or of Richard; they were well built, but on a small scale. The likeness between them went deeper than that of outward form. As Gerald expresses it, “while one was corn in the blade, the other was corn in the ear”; but the blade developed fast. Before John was twenty, Gerald, though evidently striving hard to make the best of him, was driven to confess that, “caught in the toils and snared by the temptations of unstable and dissolute youth, he was as wax to receive impressions of evil, but hardened against those who would have warned him of its danger; compliant to the fancy of the moment; making no resistance to the impulses of nature; more given to luxurious ease than to warlike exercises, to enjoyment than to endurance, to vanity than to virtue.”[41] As soon as the king was out of Normandy, Geoffrey and John joined hands; they collected “a great host,” with which they marched, burning and plundering, into Poitou. Richard retaliated by harrying Britanny, till Henry, on learning what was going on, summoned all three brothers to England. They obeyed the summons,[42] and in December a “final concord” between them was drawn up and sealed at Westminster.[43] Whatever were its terms, they evidently did not include any cession of territory by either of the elder brothers to the youngest. Geoffrey was at once sent back to Normandy “to take care of it with its other guardians”;[44] and immediately after Christmas Richard obtained leave to return to Poitou.[45] The king’s project of transferring Aquitaine to John had been merely a passing fancy. Of the scheme for establishing him in Ireland Henry had never lost sight; and this scheme he now determined to carry into effect. [Sidenote: 1185]