They wandered in vain from one camp to another, until they were obliged to cross over to St. Sever, and there they found Sir Gilbert d'Umfreville, whose Norman lineage perhaps made him kinder than the rest. He was at last prevailed upon to take them on the second day of the year, a Monday, into the presence of the King. Though every hour meant a prolonging of their torture, the ambassadors fought foot by foot the conditions of surrender and calmly argued every sentence of the treaty with that Norman love of litigation which now rose to its highest and most impassioned point. In the great hall of the Chartreuse de la Rose, they saw the cold, impassive, handsome countenance of the young English King, with that touch of sadness on it that foretold his early death,[42] and the detached nobility of manner which fitted a King who had exhausted every pleasure before he took, and worthily wielded, the responsibilities of power. [Footnote 42: The prophetic word "Jamais" was in the device upon the tapestry above him.] The first request of the ambassadors was for the succour of the poor outcasts in the moat all round the town. But Henry only announced his firm resolve to take Rouen and all its citizens and to make those who had opposed his will "remember me until the Day of Judgment." At last an armistice of two or three days was granted, and on the third of January a solemn meeting of the picked ambassadors of either side took place between the Chartreuse and the Porte St. Hilaire, where all the splendour of the English noblemen's caparisons and furniture was displayed, and the starving commissioners from Rouen made the bravest show they could beneath the Fleurs de Lys of France. Close to all this magnificence was the yet living horror of the moat, which was now almost filled up with dead. From time to time the heap of rags and withered anatomies heaved slowly, and the little spectre of a child crawled out, imploring food. And all day long the solemn arguments went on beneath the sumptuous pavilions of the English, until, after three days of discussion, the ambassadors of Rouen went back, unsatisfied, into their city. "We askid mykille," says the poet, "they proferid smal, That is yuelle to accorde with alle. Tho thay tretid an xiiij nyzt And zit accorde they ne myzt." [Illustration: THE APSE OF ST. OUEN, SHOWING THE TOUR AUX CLERCS ON THE RIGHT, SEEN FROM THE GARDENS OF THE HOTEL DE VILLE]