In these last sentences the poet discloses the secret of his power. It was the irresistible sway of his eloquence over men’s minds, his ‘don terrible de la familiarité,’ as the elder Mirabeau puts it, which enabled Bertran to play on men’s minds as on the strings of a lute, and to make them form and vary their purpose according to his impulse. In this very _sirventes_ we gain an idea of the manner in which he lashes the hesitating barons into resistance against the common oppressor. Talairand is accused of indolence—‘he does not trot nor gallop, motionless he lies in his cot, neither lance nor arrow does he move. He lives like a Lombard pedlar, and when others depart for the war he stretches himself and yawns.’ Another baron, whose name, William of Gordon, strikes the English ear with familiar note, is warned against Richard’s persuasive statecraft. ‘I love you well,’ Bertran says, ‘but my enemies want to make a fool and a dupe of you, and the time seems long to them before they see you in their ranks.’ The _sirventes_ winds up with a climax of fierce invective against Richard himself. ‘To Perigeux close to the wall, so that I can throw my battle-axe over it, I will come well armed, and riding on my horse Bayard; and if I find the glutton of Poitou he shall know the cut of my sword. A mixture of brain and splinters of iron he shall wear on his brow.’ Bertran’s assertions of his dangerous influence over men’s minds were not the idle boastings of poetic vanity. A terrible conspiracy was formed against Richard, and the greatest nobles of the country, the Viscounts of Ventadorn, of Camborn, of Segur, and of Limoges, the Count of Perigord, William of Gordon, the Lord of Montfort, besides many important cities, are mentioned amongst the rebels. A meeting took place, and we may imagine the picturesque scene when ‘in the old monastery of San Marsal they swore on a missal’ to stand by each other and never to enter into separate treaties with Richard. The special causes of this rebellion are not known to us. We may surmise, and indeed know in a general way, that the hand of their lion-hearted lord weighed heavily on the provinces of Southern France. But the veil which covers this portion of Henry II.’s reign has never yet been fully lifted, and till that is done we must be satisfied with such hints as may be gleaned from scattered bits of information in ancient writers. Our Provençal manuscript offers a clue not without interest to the historical student. It speaks of certain _rendas de caretas_, rates of carts or wagons, most likely a toll which Richard had unlawfully appropriated, and which in reality belonged to the ‘Young King,’ that is to Prince Henry, to whom it had been given by his father.