None of the pictures of Richard’s outer or inner man which have come down to us date from a time quite so early as the year 1179; but the main features of his personality, outward and inward, were already marked enough to show us in those pictures a true likeness of the young conqueror of Taillebourg. In the sculptured effigies of Richard at Fontevraud and at Rouen the outlines of the face give so little indication of age as to suggest that in the living model they may have been—except for the beard and moustache—almost the same at forty-one as at twenty-one; the features are well proportioned and finely formed. In life they were crowned with a profusion of hair “of a colour midway between red and yellow”—in other words, of the rare golden or still rarer auburn hue. The young duke’s stature was lofty,[110] above the average height,[111] his frame shapely and well proportioned, with long, straight, flexible limbs; “no arm was better adapted than his for drawing sword, nor more powerful to strike with it.”[112] His whole person had such an aspect of dignity that two independent observers, at different times, described it in the same words—“a form worthy to occupy a place of high command”;[113] and the seemliness of his appearance was enhanced by that of his manners and dress.[114] The stories of his gigantic strength all relate to the time of the Crusade, when that strength was in its maturity; but a man of whom such tales were told must have been a born athlete. On the other hand, it was certainly before his Aquitanian days were over that he contracted the quartan ague which, says Gerald of Wales, “was given him to repress the over fierce workings of his mind, but by which he, like the lion, yea, more than lion that he was,[115] seemed rather to be influenced as by a goad; for while thus almost continually trembling, he remained intrepid in his determination to make the whole world tremble and fear before him.”[116]