He took a quill from the table, dipped it into ink, and began to write upon a bit of paper, making a computation of strength. He put down many lords whose suzerain he was, and beneath each name its quota of knights, sergeants, and footmen, the walled towns besides Roche-de-Frêne that called him lord, the villages, the castles, manors, and religious houses, Roche-de-Frêne itself, and this great castle that had never been taken. He added allies to the list, and the sum of gold and silver he thought he could command, and with part of it purchase free companies. He paused, then added help—an uncertain quantity—from his suzerain, King Philip. “It is a fair setting-forth,” said Gaucelm the Fortunate. “Once, and that not so long ago, Montmaure would not in his most secret dream have dared—. But he has made favour and wily bargains, and snapping up this fief and that, played the great carp in the pool! And now drifts by this fancy of Aquitaine for Count Jaufre, and he seizes it.” “Aye, it is Richard that gives sunshine to his war!” Gaucelm rose from the settle. “I love not war, though we live in a warring world. Little by little, child, it may change.” The day passed, the evening of courtly revel, of paces woven around Guiraut of the Vale. The Princess Audiart was again in her chamber, her women dismissed, the candles extinguished, the winter stars looking in at window, fresh logs upon the hearth casting tongues of light. These struck in places the pictured hangings. Here Ulysses dallied with Calypso and here he met Circe. Here Nausicaa threw the ball, and here Penelope wove the web and unravelled it, and here Minerva paced with shield and spear. The figures were as rude as the hues were bright, but a fresh and keen imagination brought them into human roundness and proportion. Audiart lay in her bed, and they surrounded her as they had done since early girlhood when at her entreaty this chamber in the White Tower had been given her. She was glad now to be alone with the familiar figures and with the fitful firelight and the stars that, when the hearth-blaze sank, she could see through the nearest window. She was read in the science of her time; those points of light, white or bluish or golden, had for her an interest of the mind and of the spirit. Now, through the window, there gleamed in upon her one of the astrologers’ “royal” stars. She by no means believed all that the astrologers said. She was sceptic toward much that was preached, doubted the usefulness of much that was done, and yet could act though she doubted. When doubt, growing, became a sense of probability, then—swerve her as it might from her former course—she would act, as forthright as might be, in the interest of that sense. The star shone in the western window—red Aldebaran. “You look like war, Aldebaran, Aldebaran!” thought the princess. “Come, tell me if Gaucelm, the good man, will win over Savaric, the wicked man—You tell naught—you tell naught!”