Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, left the place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robert de Mercœur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same bench with Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed _alba_ or morning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeated the first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quoth Robert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give values value! The second goes thus—” But before the _alba_ was wholly learned came a page, summoning the jongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Here was that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now, jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?” Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into the other’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” he said. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?” He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body of the letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laid it upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood in a brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart and memory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in Angoulême. At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!” Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber where he may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin, “Go! but I shall send for you here again!” The day descended to evening, the evening to night. Darkness had prevailed for a length of time when Ammonet returned to the small, bare room where Garin rested, stretched upon a bench. “Come, jongleur!” said the page. “My lord is ready for bed and would, methinks, be sung to sleep.” Rising, he followed, and came again to the Count’s chamber, where now was firelight and candle-light, and the Count of Beauvoisin in a furred robe, pacing the room from side to side. “Wait without,” he said to Ammonet, and the two men were alone together. The count paced the floor, Garin stood by the hooded fireplace. He had seen in the afternoon that he and this lord might understand each other. The count spoke. “No marvel that we liked your singing! What if there had been in hall knight and crusader who had heard you beyond the sea?” “Chance, risk, and brambles grow in every land.” “_Garin of the Golden Island._—I know not who, in Angoulême, may know that you fight with Roche-de-Frêne. Duke Richard, who knows somewhat of all troubadours, knows it.” “I do not mean to cry it aloud.—Few in this country know my face, and my name stays hidden.—May we speak, my lord count, of another presence in Angoulême?”