In the mid-afternoon they came upon knights resting by a great stone, in a ring of trees with russet leaves. These hailed the jongleur and the woman with him—when they saw what manner of penitent was the latter they crossed themselves and let her stay without the ring, seated among stones some distance from it. But they and their squires listened to Garin’s singing. He sang for them a many songs, for when one was done they clamoured for another. Then they gave him largesse, and would have constrained him to turn and go with them to the host of Montmaure, where would be employment enough, since Count Jaufre nor no one else had many jongleurs of such voice and skill! Though they knew it not, voice and skill served him again when he turned them from constraining to agreement to let him go his way, on pilgrimage with her who sat among the stones. They made him sing again, and then, as all rested, they asked questions as to the host through which he had come. He knew, from this dropped word and that, that they were knights of Aquitaine, riding to join that same Jaufre. With their squires they numbered but twelve in all. Food and wine were taken from the lading of a sumpter mule and placed upon the ground. They gave the jongleur a generous portion, consented to his bearing to the penitent of the cross, the Unfortunate his sister, portion of his portion. Returned, he asked of one of the squires with whom he ate, where was Duke Richard? He was at Excideuil. “They say,” said the jongleur, “that he and Count Jaufre laugh and sigh in the same moment.” “It was once so,” answered the squire and drank wine. “Is’t not so now?” The other put down the wine cup. “Did you make poesy, jongleur, as well as you sing it, I could give you subjects! Songs of Absence, now. Songs of a subtile vapour called Difference, that while you turn your head becomes thick and hard!—Perhaps they think that they yet laugh and sigh in the same moment.” “One must be near a man to see the colour of his soul.” “Aye, so!—The knight I serve—him with the grey in his beard—is of Richard’s household.” “I have sung in this court and sung in that,” said Elias of Montaudon, “but chances it so that never I saw Duke Richard!” “He paints leopards on his shield—they call him Lion-Heart—he is good at loving, good at hating—he means to do well and highly—but the passions of men are legion.” “I stake all,” said the jongleur, “on his being a nobler knight than is Count Jaufre!” “My gold with yours, brother,” answered the squire, and poured more wine. “And he is at Excideuil?” “At Excideuil. He builds a great castle there, but his heart builds at going overseas and saving again the Holy Sepulchre!” There was a silence. “He can then,” said Elias of Montaudon, “be sought through the imagination.” “I know not wholly what you mean by that,” said the squire. “But when he was made knight and watched his armour, he watched, with other matters, some sort of generosity.”