“I consent,” said Philippe, “for the love of Heaven and of the Holy Sepulchre, to restore to King Henry what I have taken from him, provided he will immediately wed my sister Alice to his son Richard, and secure to him the succession of the crown, I also demand that his son John should go to Palestine with his brother, or he will disturb the peace of the kingdom.”
“That he will!” exclaimed Richard.
“No,” said Henry; “this is more than I can grant. Let your sister marry John; let me dispose of my own kingdom.”
“Then the truce is broken,” answered the French King. The Cardinal interfered, threatening to lay France under an interdict, and excommunicate Philippe and Richard if they would not consent to Henry’s conditions. Their answers were characteristic.
“I do not fear your curses,” said Philippe. “You have no right, to pronounce them on the realm of France. Your words smell of English sterlings.”
“I’ll kill the madman who dares to excommunicate two royal princes in one breath!” cried Coeur de Lion, drawing his sword; but his friends threw themselves between, and the Cardinal escaped, mounted his mule, and rode off in haste.
The French took Mans, and pillaged it cruelly, while Richard looked on in shame and grief at the desolation of his own inheritance. His father, weak and unwell, resolved to make peace, and for the last time appointed a meeting with Philippe on the plain between Tours and Amboise. There it was arranged that Richard should be acknowledged as heir, and Alice put into the hands of the Archbishop either of Canterbury or Rouen, as he should prefer, until he should return from the Crusade. The conference was interrupted by a vivid flash of lightning and a tremendous burst of thunder. To the evil conscience of the elder King it was the voice of avenging Heaven: he reeled in his saddle, and his attendants were forced to support him in their arms and carry him away. He travelled in a litter to Chinon, where his first son had deserted him, and there, while he lay dangerously ill, the treaty was sent to him to receive his signature, and the conditions read over to him. By one of them, those who had engaged in Richard’s party were to transfer their allegiance to him.
“Who are they—the ungrateful traitors?” he asked. “Let me hear their names.”
His secretary began the list: “John, Count of Mortagne.”
“John!”—and the miserable father started up in his bed. “John! It cannot be true!—my heart, my beloved son! He whom I cherished beyond the rest—he for whose sake I have suffered all this—can he also have deserted me?” He was told it was too true. “Well,” said he, falling back on his bed, and turning his face from the light, “let the rest go as it will! I care not what becomes of me, or of the world!”