Now this remark, uttered as it was in a tone of irony, was calculated to excite unpleasant sensations, and to recall disagreeable reminiscences; and Henry looked mortified, and Prince Edward threw his magnificent head disdainfully backward. But Louis, ever on the watch, hastened to soothe their rising ire.
'Would to God, Henry!' said he, earnestly, 'that the twelve peers of France and the barons would agree to my wishes. We should then be inseparable friends.'
'I believe it, Louis, my cousin,' exclaimed Henry, quickly.
'I grieve, my Lord knows,' continued Louis, 'that our feelings of affection cannot be cemented on all points; but I cannot bend the obstinacy of my barons; and therefore I perceive plainly that you will never recover your rights.'
'Nay, the future is with God and his saints,' said Henry; who, pacific as he was, by no means relished the idea of the Plantagenets being perpetually excluded from their inheritance. 'Meanwhile, cousin, there is peace between us, and let not the feast flag.'
'Henry,' said Louis, pausing, as he approached a painful subject, 'it grieves me sore to think that, of all the English who landed with me at Damietta, few, indeed, escaped the carnage of Mansourah. Nevertheless, I have brought home with me two English squires, who are anxious to return to their own country, and whom I would fain recommend to your gracious protection.'
'Cousin,' said Henry, responding with readiness and sympathy, 'for your sake I will both protect and honour them.'
Walter Espec and Guy Muschamp were immediately summoned, and, marching up the great hall between the tables, approached the two kings and bent their knees.
'Both of them,' explained Louis, mildly, 'have rendered good services, and encountered great perils, and undergone great sufferings for the cross. One saved my brother, the Count of Poictiers, from captivity; and the other saved my kinswoman, Adeline de Brienne, from still worse evils.' And the king looked towards the noble demoiselle, who, princess as she was, felt her heart beat rapidly, and was under the necessity of making a strong effort not to betray the interest which she felt in the fortunes of the young warrior, with whose fate, she had convinced herself, since the rescue at Passe-Poulain, her own was strangely intermingled.
'Wherefore,' continued Louis, 'I would fain, ere parting with them, give them a token of my appreciation of their piety, and the courage they have shown in hours of danger and disaster, as I have already admonished them how to act towards their God and their neighbour. Kneel.'