"The holy conclave have elected the cardinal Lothaire, sire," replied the knight. "Your highness has seen him here in France, as well as at Rome: a man of a great and capacious mind."
"Too great!--too great!" replied Philip thoughtfully. "He is no Celistin. We shall soon hear more!" and, rising from his seat, he paced the narrow space of his cabinet backwards and forwards for several minutes; then paused, and placing one hand on his counsellor's shoulder, he laid the forefinger of the other on his breast--"If I could rely on my barons," said he emphatically,--"if I could rely on my barons;--not that I do not reverence the church, Guerin,--God knows! I would defend it from heathens and heretics, and miscreants, with my best blood. Witness my journey to the Holy Land!--witness the punishment of Amaury!--witness the expulsion of the Jews! But this Lothaire----"
"Now Innocent the Third!" said the minister, taking advantage of a pause in the king's speech. "Why he is a great man, sire--a man of a vast and powerful mind: firm in his resolves, as he is bold in his undertakings--powerful--beloved. I would have my royal lord think what must be his conduct, if Innocent should take the same view of the affairs of France as was taken by Celestin."
Philip paused, and, with his eyes bent upon the ground, remained for several minutes in deep thought. Gradually the colour mounted in his cheek, and some strong emotion seemed struggling in his bosom, for his eye flashed, and his lip quivered; and, suddenly catching the arm of the hospitaller, he shook the clenched fist of his other hand in the air, exclaiming--"He will not! He shall not! He dare not!--Oh, Guerin, if I may but rely upon my barons!"
"Sire, you cannot do so," replied the knight firmly. "They are turbulent and discontented; and the internal peace of your kingdom has more to fear from their disloyal practices, than even your domestic peace has from the ambitious intermeddling of pope Innocent. You must not count upon your barons, sire, to support you in opposition to the church. Even now. Sir Julian of the Mount, the sworn friend of the Counts of Boulogne and Flanders, has undertaken a journey to Auvergne, which bodes a new coalition against you, sire. Sir Julian is discontented, because you refused him the feof of Beaumetz, which was held by his sister's husband, dead without heirs. The Count de Boulogne you know to be a traitor. The count of Flanders was ever a dealer in rebellion. The old Count d'Auvergne, though no rebel, loves you not."
"They will raise a lion!" cried the king, stamping with his foot--"ay, they will raise a lion! Let Sir Julian of the Mount beware! The citizens of Albert demand a charter. Sir Julian claims some ancient rights. See that the charter be sealed to-morrow, Guerin, giving them right of watch and ward, and wall--rendering them an untailleable and free commune. Thus shall we punish good Sir Julian of the Mount, and flank his fair lands with a free city, which shall be his annoyance, and give us a sure post upon the very confines of Flanders. See it be done! As to the rest, come what may, my private happiness I will subject to no man's will; nor shall it be my hands that stoop the royal sceptre of France to the bidding of any prelate for whom the earth finds room.--Silence, my friend!" he added sharply; "the king's resolve is taken; and, above all, let not a doubt of the sureness of her marriage reach the ears of the queen. I, Philip of France, say the divorce shall stand!--and who is there shall give me the lie in my own land?" Thus saying, the king turned, and led the way back to the apartment where he had left the queen.
His first step upon the rushes of the room in which she sat woke Agnes de Meraine from her reverie; and though her husband's absence had been but short, her whole countenance beamed with pleasure at his return; while, laying on his arm the small white hand, which even monks and hermits have celebrated, she gazed up in his face, as if to see whether the tidings he had heard had stolen any thing from the happiness they were before enjoying. Philip's eyes rested on her, full of tenderness and love; and then turned to his minister with an appealing, and almost reproachful look. Guerin felt, himself, how difficult, how agonising it would be to part with a being so lovely and so beloved; and with a deep sigh, and a low inclination to the queen, he quitted the apartment.
CHAPTER V.
In Auvergne, but in a different part of it from that where we left our party of pilgrims, rode onward a personage who seemed to think, with Jacques, that motley is the only wear. Not that he was precisely habited in the piebald garments of the professed fool; but yet his dress was as many coloured as the jacket of my ancient friend harlequin; and so totally differed from the vestments of that age, that it seemed as if he had taken a jump of two or three centuries, and stolen some gay habit from the court of Charles the Seventh. He wore long tight silk breeches, of a bright flame-colour; a sky-blue cassock of cloth girt round his waist by a yellow girdle, below which it did not extend above three inches, forming a sort of frill about his middle; while, at the same time, this sort of surcoat being without sleeves, his arms appeared from beneath covered with a jacket of green silk, cut close to his shape, and buttoned tight at the wrists. On his head he wore a black cap, not unlike the famous Phrygian bonnet; and he was mounted on a strong grey mare, then considered a ridiculous and disgraceful equipage.
This strange personage's figure no way corresponded with his absurd dress; for, had one desired a model of active strength, it could nowhere have been found better than in his straight and muscular limbs. His face, however, was more in accordance with the extravagance of his habiliments; for, certainly, never did a more curious physiognomy come from the cunning and various hand of Nature. His nose was long, and was seemingly boneless; for, ever and anon, whether from some natural convulsive motion, or from a voluntary and laudable desire to improve upon the singular hideousness of his countenance, this long, sausage-like contrivance in the midst of his face would wriggle from side to side, with a very portentous and uneasy movement. His eyes were large and grey, and did not in the least discredit the nose in whose company they were placed, though they had in themselves a manifest tendency to separate, never having any fixed and determined direction, but wandering about apparently independent of each other,--sometimes far asunder,--sometimes, like Pyramus and Thisbe, wooing each other across the wall of his nose with a most portentous squint. Besides this obliquity, they were endowed with a cold, leadenness of stare, which would have rendered the whole face as meaningless as a mask, had not, every now and then, a still, keen, sharp glance stolen out of them for a moment, like the sudden kindling up of a fire where all seems cold and dead. His mouth was guarded with large thick lips, which extended far and wide through a black and bushy beard; and, when he yawned, which was more than once the case, as he rode through the fertile valleys of Limagne, a great chasm seemed to open in his countenance, exposing, to the very back, two ranges of very white, broad teeth, with their accompanying gums.