"Then he is a very young man, I suppose? for you are not old, and yet you speak of not surviving him. I was in hopes," cried she, addressing Beck, "that my lord the king would have brought this Wallace to have supped with me here; but for once rebellion overcame its master."
Beck made some reply which Wallace did not hear, and the queen again turning to him resumed:
"Minstrel, we French ladies are very fond of a good mien; and I shall be a little reconciled to your northern realms if you tell me that Sir William Wallace is anything like as handsome as some of the gay knights by whom you see me surrounded."
Wallace smiled, and replied:
"The comeliness of Sir William Wallace lies in a strong arm and a feeling heart; and if these be charms in the eyes of female goodness, he may hope to be not quite an object of abhorrence to the sister of Philip le Bel!"
The minstrel bowed as he spoke, and the young queen laughing again, said:
"I wish not to come within the influence of either. But sing me some Scottish legend, and I will promise wherever I see the knight to treat him with all courtesy due to valor."
Wallace again struck the chords of his harp; and with a voice whose full and melodious tones rolled round the vast dome of the hall, he sung the triumphs of Beuther.** The queen fixed her eyes upon him; and when he ended, she turned and whispered Gavestton:
"If the voice of this man had been Wallace's trumpet, I should not now wonder at the discomfiture of England. He almost tempted me from my allegiance, as the warlike animation of his notes seemed to charge the flying Southrons."
**In commemoration of the victory which this ancient Scottish prince obtained over the Britons before the Christian era, the field of conquest has ever since been called Rutherglen.