the name given, somewhat inappropriately as it seems, to the new fortress—“a fair castle has been, without hindrance, built and set in the midst of the fields. I would not that the young king knew of it or saw it,” ran the troubadour’s sarcastic verse, “for he would not be pleased therewith; but I fear, so white it is, he will see it from Matefélon.”[162] The young king seems to have remonstrated with Richard,[163] but without effect. It is doubtful whether these things took place before or after his visit to Limoges; the sequence of events in Aquitaine during the years 1181-2, like that of Bertrand’s _sirventes_ on which we are largely dependent for our knowledge of those events, is obscure; but one thing is clear: before Christmas 1182 young Henry was secretly pledged to the league against his brother. Outwardly, that league was for a time broken up by the submission of Aimar of Limoges and Elias of Périgord, and for some months the Taillefer brothers and their adherents in the Angoumois seem to have been the only enemies whom Richard had to fight. At the beginning of November he took from them the castle of Blanzac;[164] and about the same time Chalais was fortified against him by its lord, Oliver of Castillon.[165] Before Christmas Richard rejoined his father and brothers in Normandy. He seems to have taken Bertrand de Born with him; at any rate he and Bertrand were for a while both at once with the court at Argenton, and to all appearance on very friendly terms.[166] Most likely, however, their friendliness was on both sides only external. Bertrand soon afterwards unceremoniously expressed his opinion that the Norman court, “where there was no _gab_ and laughter and no giving of presents,” was not worthy to be called a court, and declared that the dulness and rusticity (“l’enois e la vilania”) of Argenton would have been the death of him, but for the “good company” of the duchess of Saxony,[167] Richard’s sister, to whom the troubadour had (according to his own account) been introduced in a highly complimentary manner by Richard himself.[168] Bertrand’s own military resources were small,[169] and he is not likely to have taken any active part in the recent war; but the earlier _sirventes_ by which he had striven to foment it seem to have already brought upon him a warning from the duke,[170] and it may have been a measure of policy on Richard’s part, when he quitted his duchy, to command or invite the poet to accompany him, and even to be at some pains to furnish him with a new subject for his verse.