Huon then said: "May it please our Lord Jesus Christ that this guerdon be returned to you twofold." Then the prisoners were released, and, after a sumptuous entertainment, the emperor accompanied Huon and his noble lady on their way back to Bordeaux. Bordeaux is interesting to the English race, because, among other reasons, it was for about three hundred years a dependency of the English crown, being the dowry of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married Henry II. after her divorce from Louis le Jeune. We associate the city, too, with Froissart and the Black Prince, who held his court here. Richard II. was born hard by at the Château de Lormont. And Henry III. came here to receive his son's bride, Eleanor of Castile, and gave her so extravagant a marriage feast as to excite the remonstrances of his nobles. The country prospered under the English government. The merchants had especial privileges granted them by Eleanor, and their wines then, as now, found a ready market in London. Bordeaux in particular increased wonderfully, and outgrew its defensive walls. The church of St. Michel dates from the time of English domination, and in that quarter of the city may be seen old houses, one story projecting beyond the other, and the whole surmounted by a pyramidal roof, said to be of English origin, and such as are to be seen in some of the oldest streets of London. Eleanor always used her influence for the benefit of her people. The most ancient charter of privileges granted the Gascon merchants was given by her on the first of July, 1189. The English seem to have taken their war-cry from the old dukes of Aquitaine who charged to the sound of "St. George for the puissant duke." A devotion to St. George was brought from the East by the Crusaders. Richard I. placed himself and his army under the special protection of this saint, who, the redoubted slayer of the dragon and the redresser of woman's wrongs, appealed to the tenderest instincts of the chivalric heart. St. George's remains were brought from Asia by the Crusaders, and a large part is enshrined at Toulouse, in the great basilica of St. Sernin. The crest of the dukes of Aquitaine was a leopard, which the kings of England bore for a long time on their shields. Edward III. is called a valiant pard in his epitaph. These old dukes of Aquitaine seem always to have gone to extremes either as sinners or saints. Eleanor's grandfather, as I have said, was one of the earliest of the troubadours. He was distinguished for his bravery, his musical voice, and his manly beauty. His early life was such as to incur the censure of the bishop, but he ended his career in penitence, and the last of his poems is a farewell _á la chevalerie qu'il a tant aimée_ for the sake of the cross. He was one of the first to join the crusades at the head of sixty thousand warriors, but he lost his troops and gained neither glory nor renown.