“Ha, Beauvoisin, we sent for you but found you not!—Come to supper, man, with me to-night!” His roving blue eye found out Robert of Mercœur. “Do you come with him, Robert—and we will talk of how the world will seem when all are poets!” “Beausire,” said the count, “at your will! Now I turn beggar and beg for you for guest in my house to-morrow.” “I will come—I will come!” said Richard. He nodded to Beauvoisin, put his horse into motion, clattered down the ill-paved street. His train followed, lords and knights speaking to the count as they passed. When all were gone in noise and colour, those who had ridden to the Abbey of the Fountain reëntered the wider street and so came to the house whence they had started. Dismounting in the court where Garin had sung, they went, one to this business or pleasure, one to that. But the count, entering, mounted a great echoing flight of stairs to his chamber, and here, obeying his signal, came also the Knight of the Wood. Beauvoisin dismissed all attendants, and the two were alone. “I have seen your princess,” said Beauvoisin. “She is a gallant lady, though not fair.” “Ah, what is ‘fair’? The time tells the eyes that such and such is beauty. Then comes another time with its reversal! But all the time, if the soul is ‘fair’? The princess is ‘fair’ to me.” Beauvoisin looked at him steadily. “I see,” he said “that we have a like fate—God He knoweth all, and what the great cup of life holds, holds, holds!... Well, that princess has courage and is wise! I had heard as much of her, and I see that it is so. In her first womanhood the Abbess Madeleine was a long while at the court of Roche-de-Frêne. Your princess is her friend.” He paced the room, then, coming to the fire, bent over the flame. “I see, my lord count,” said Garin, “devotion and generousness!” Beauvoisin was silent, warming himself at the flame. Garin of the Golden Island, standing at the window, looked toward Roche-de-Frêne. His mind’s eye saw assault and repulse and again assault, the push against walls and gates, the men upon the walls, at the gates, the engines of war, the reeking fury of fight. The keener ear heard the war-cries, the clangour and the shouting, and underneath, the groan. He saw the banner that attacked, and above the castle, above Red Tower and Lion Tower, the banner that defended. He turned toward the room again. The count spoke, “_Jaufre de Montmaure!_ I have no love for Count Jaufre, nor friendship with him. I was of those who, an they could, would have kept Richard from this huge support he has given. My party would still see it withdrawn.—But Richard treads a road of his own.... Were Jaufre Richard, your princess, being here, would be in the lion’s den! But just her coming—the first outbursting of his anger over—will put her person safe with Richard.” “That has been felt—knowing by old rumour certain qualities in him.”