“Tush, boy, Simon is as much my cousin as thy brother, and I would not help to throw fresh stains on the name that, but for my father’s selfish counsellors, would stand highest at home! Besides,” he added, as one half ashamed of his generosity and willing to qualify it, “supposing it got abroad that he had aimed this stroke at the heir of England—why, then England’s honour would be concerned, and we should have stout Gilbert de Clare and all the rest of them wild to storm Simon in his Galilean fastness, without King Herod’s boxes, I trow. Then would all the Druses, and the Maronites, and the Saracens, and the half-breeds, the worst of the whole, come down on them in some impassable gorge, and the troops I have taken such pains to keep in health and training would leave their bones in those doleful passes; and not for the sake of the Holy Sepulchre, but of my private quarrel. No, no, Richard, we will keep our own counsel, and do our best that Simon may not get another chance, before I can move within the walls of Acre; and then we will spread our sails, and pray that the Holy Land may make a holier man of him.” CHAPTER XII THE GARDEN OF THE HOSPITAL “And who is yon page lying cold at his knee?”—SCOTT. EDWARD differed from Cœur de Lion in this, that he was one of the most abstemious men in his army, and disciplined himself at least as rigidly as he did other people. And it was probably on this account that he did not fulfil Dame Idonea’s predictions, but recovered favourably, and by the end of a fortnight was able, in the first coolness of early morning, to ride gently into the city of Acre, where a few days previously the Princess Eleanor had given birth to a daughter. She was christened Joan on the day of her father’s arrival, and afterwards became the special spoilt favourite of Edward, whose sternness gave place to excessive fondness among his children. Moreover, she in the end became the wife of that same red-haired Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, who at this time stood holding his wax taper, and looking at the small swaddled morsel of royalty with all a bachelor’s contempt for infancy, and little dreaming that he beheld his future Countess. Prince Edward had accepted the invitation of Sir Hugh de Revel, Grand Master of the Order of St. John, to take up his quarters in the Commandery of the brotherhood; and Richard was greatly relieved to have him there, since no watch or ward in the open camp could be so secure as this double fortress, protected in the first place by the walls of the city, and in the second by those of the Hospital itself, with its strict military and monastic discipline.