"I was not so weak once," she said. "There was a time when man said I had the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. Maiden, never man sat an horse better than I, and no warrior ever fought that could more ably handle sword. I have mustered armies to the battle ere now; I have personally conducted sieges, I have headed sallies on the camp of the King of France. Am I meek pigeon to be kept in a dovecote? Look around thee! This is my cage. Ha! the perches are fine wood, sayest thou? the seed is good, and the water is clean! I deny it not. I say only, it is a cage, and I am a royal eagle, that was never made to sit on a perch and coo! The blood of an hundred kings is thrilling all along my veins, and must I be silent? The blood of the sovereigns of France, the kingdom of kingdoms,--of the sea-kings of Denmark, of the ancient kings of Burgundy, and of the Lombards of the Iron Crown--it is with this mine heart is throbbing, and man saith, `Be still!' How can I be still, unless I were still in death? And man reckoneth I shall be a-paid for my lost sword with a needle, and for my broken sceptre he offereth me a bodkin!" With a sudden gesture she brushed all the implements for needlework from the little table to the floor. "There! gather them up, which of you list. I lack no such babe's gear. If I were but now on my Feraunt, with my visor down, clad in armour, as I was when I rode forth of Hennebon while the French were busied with the assault on the further side of the town,--forth I came with my three hundred horse, and we fired the enemy's camp--ah, but we made a goodly blaze that day! I reckon the villages saw it for ten miles around or more." "But your Grace remembereth, we won not back into the town at after," quietly suggested Perrote. "Well, what so? Went we not to Brest, and there gathered six hundred men, and when we appeared again before Hennebon, the trumpets sounded, and the gates were flung open, and we entered in triumph? Thy memory waxeth weak, old woman! I must refresh it from mine own." "Please it, your good Grace, I am nigh ten years younger than yourself."