"I forgive you those stolen sweets for this once," said Aldobrandino, "for you had great provocation. Said I not rightly a peach-blossom? Nay, a peach rather, ripe and luscious. Watered not your mouth in that game of ball when the strain of her deep breathing and the violent turning and twisting of her lithe body burst the lacing of her corsage and half her fair bosom broke covert? What a pillow was that for a bridegroom, eh, Ricciardo?" "Nay," retorted Richard, "while she repaired that accident I lifted not my eyes above the hem of her robe, that so her rare modesty might take no offence." "And had you kept them there throughout the game you would have seen much to admire," continued Aldobrandino. "Ah! the pretty little feet, the shapely ankles! But marked you those of her sisters? Cranes and ostriches! storks and sandpipers! And they call themselves not water-fowl but women!" "Swine!" said Richard to himself, "hog, not another word or I shall burst. And what unspeakable villainy is this that I should have taken service to deliver so pure and precious a maiden into the power of such a beast!" This feeling grew upon him in the short space of time before the tournament, for he met her daily, and as he marked her,--the flicker of her eyelashes upon her cheeks and the quick in-drawing of breath through her sensitive nostrils when the tales of the trouveres and jests of the jongleurs offended her exquisite modesty--his heart swelled with pain intolerable that so pure a flower should be set up as a prize for the hardest fighter to snuff at. Not so, he made bold to express his mind to Aldobrandino, should such a maid be won. "How then," snorted the other in astonishment. "What method were fairer, I ask you?" "What than to appeal to her own heart," Richard made answer, "and that by gentle observance, delicate attentions, and such refinements of self-sacrifice as in their practice might elevate a lover to some worthiness of the honour he courts?" Aldobrandino sniffed his scorn. "Appeal to her heart in the last resort I grant you, but only thus: Lady, will you have me? An she will _not_, what would your servility gain? An she _will_, it is needless. In either case it is ridiculous. Trust me, a woman sets more store by the man who compels her admiration than by him who sues for it. If he breaks the bones of other men to win her, that is compliment enough and mark you well, Ricciardo, it is all that I demand of you in my service." So the week sped before the tournament; and Richard loved Sancie more and more, and ever Aldobrandino was at his side taunting him until he burst forth into many a torrent of indignation, whereat the other but laughed and leered, so that Richard loathed and hated him to the death.