As the new Rainouart grew from infancy to boyhood, day by day he redeemed his mother's prayers and fulfilled his mother's wishes. He showed from the first an extraordinary strength of body. His physical frame had in it nothing of the bull-bulk of Count Baldwin, but inside his slender form and smooth skin he seemed to be compact with steel. The Lady Isabeau was too brave a lady to forget that a man's first business is to be a man, wherefore the young prince was well trained in arms and skilled in all bodily exercises. As he grew into years and proficiency in martial arts, the contrast between his slender juvenility and his extraordinary vigor and power grew more remarkable. It was curious to find this amazing heritance of the paternal strength so intimately allied with, and subject to, the spirituality of his mother. Rainouart was never quarrelsome, and could scarcely be provoked into a brawl save by some deed of injustice or dishonor; but if ever he were forced to fisticuffs it always went hard with his adversaries, though the odds were heavy against him, as they always were in such cases. Youths of his own age, but youths of greater breadth of body and show of muscle, taken unawares by his appearance, would often challenge him to feats of strength, confident of easy victory, only to be amazed and discomfited by the gentle serenity with which he overcame their sturdiest efforts. The boy's mind was not neglected at the charge of his body. The tastes of the Lady Isabeau were lettered for an age which did not overprize letters, and she saw to it that her son had a breeding more scholarly than would have pleased the mind of Count Baldwin, who lustily despised and damned all clerks and cared for nothing in manhood but big-boned fighting-engines. The boy was early trained to read and write, to taste some tincture of Latinity, and to find his inspiration and his ideal in the chivalrous epics of France and Britain. When he came to young manhood and entered the service of the King of France, he was soon recognized as one of the most promising knights of the king's following, and the friendship of many men was given to him and the friendship of many women offered to him. The friendship of the men he took amiably and modestly, though no man was his superior of all the king's men in strength or skill. The friendship of the women he let go by him, also very modestly but always with decision. There were many that longed to knock at the door of his heart and enter in, and there were some that showed their longing, most notably of all the beautiful Esclaramonde of Bayonne, whom most men worshipped for her dark, imperious loveliness, and whom all the women, her rivals, hated for a witch, and upbraided beneath their breaths for her skill in philtres. But Esclaramonde, who had won many hearts, and was said to have shown herself generous in reward for her victories, gained no greater favor in Rainouart's eyes than any other lady of the many dainty ladies