'Fifty poets,' continued nestling Berengère, 'have made songs of me. There is a wreath of songs. They call me Frozen Heart: do you know why? They say I am too proud to love a poet. But if the poet is a king! I have a certain fear just now. I think I will--' She took Jehane's arm--'No! no!' She drew away. 'You are too tall--I will never take your arm--I am ashamed. I beg you to go before me. Lead the way.' So Jehane went first of all the ladies who led the Queen to the King. King Richard, who himself loved to go splendidly, sat upon his throne in the citadel looking like a statue of gold and ivory. Upon his head was a crown of gold, he had a long tunic of white velvet, round his shoulders a great cope of figured gold brocade, work of Genoa, and very curious. His face and hands were paler than their wont was, his eyes frosty blue, like a winter sea that is made bright, not warm, by the sun. He sat up stiffly, hands on knees; and all about him stood the lords and prelates of the most sumptuous court in the West. King Sancho the Wise was ready to stoop all his wisdom and burden of years before such superb state as this; but the moment his procession entered the hall Richard went down from his daïs to meet it, kissed him on the cheek, asked how he did, and set the careworn man at his ease. As for Berengère, he took from her of both cheeks, held her small hand, spoke in her own language honourable and cheerful words, drove a little colour into her face, screwed a word or two out of her. Afterwards there was high mass, sung by the Archbishop of Auch, and a great banquet, served in the cloister-garth of the Charterhouse under a red canopy, because the hail of the citadel was too small. At this feast King Richard played a great part--cheerful, easy of approach, making phrases like swords, giving and taking the talk without any advantage of his rank. His jokes had a bite in them, as when he said of Bertran that the best proof of the excellence of his verses was that he had undoubtedly made them himself; or of Averrhoes, the Arabian physician and infidel philosopher, that the man equalised his harms by poisoning with his drugs the bodies of those whose minds had been tainted by his heresies. But he was the first to set the laugh against himself, and had a flash of Dame Berengère's fine teeth before he had been ten minutes at table. After dinner the Kings and their ministers went into debate; and then it seemed that Richard had got up from his meat perverse. He would only talk of one thing, namely, sixty thousand gold besants. On this he harped maddeningly, with calculations of how much victual the sum would buy, of the weight in ounces, of its content in sacks in a barn, of the mileage of the coins set edge to edge, and so on, and so on. Don Sancho sat winking and fidgeting in his chair, and talked of his illustrious daughter.