And one blow of his axe cut in two, as easily as if slicing a ripe pear, a log as thick as the herald’s own thigh.
Convinced at last that this ugly, clumsy, grimy dwarf was really the great leader he sought, the crestfallen herald gave his message (to which Bertrand replied with a knightly courtesy that, with all his soldier-like bluntness, never failed him on occasion), and retired much abashed, and not a little scandalized, to find the greatest captain of an age famous for ostentatious splendour dressed worse than a scarecrow.
Then Du Guesclin, having arrayed himself for his call on the duke, went to ask after his wounded comrades, Huon and the Wolf; for, as to his own hurts, even the entreaties of his gentle and beautiful wife (to whom he had thus cut his way through an army) could only prevail on him to bandage them hastily, though most men would have thought them serious enough.
Finding his cousin better, though still weak, Bertrand next inquired after the Wolf, who was being nursed by Lady Tiphaine du Guesclin herself. She met her husband at the door of the sick-room with her finger on her lips.
“How fares he?” whispered Bertrand.
“He sleeps, thank Heaven; and if the sleep last and he wake refreshed, he shall do well, please God, though he is sore stricken. But thou, my Bertrand, whither goest thou?”
“To the English camp,” said her lord, with a boyish grin. “His highness of Lancaster is so gracious as to hold my ugly visage an ornament to his table. Methinks he had gone nearer the mark had he bidden thee in my stead.”
“To the English camp?” echoed Tiphaine, with a slight tremor in her sweet voice. “Promise me, then, my own true knight, that thou wilt fight no combat with their champions, even if they provoke thee to it. Bethink thee” (and she laid her soft hand fondly on the grim warrior’s mighty arm) “that thy life belongs to the whole realm, and may not be lightly perilled against every hothead who would win renown by crossing steel with the great Du Guesclin.”
“Why, what is this that thou say’st, lady mine?” quoth Bertrand, with an air of innocent surprise. “Think’st thou that I, of all men, am one to seek causeless quarrels?”
In fact, it was good Bertrand’s firm belief that he was by nature a very peaceable man, and that his countless duels were forced on him by others, and in no way due to his own love of fighting.