He seized the first of his long curls and severed it.
Grimly, not giving himself time to pause, he proceeded to the next, and one by one hacked them from his head, his beautiful blond, perfumed curls.
Conrad sighed as he saw them lying on the grass, and felt his shorn head. He longed for a mirror in which to see the extent of his disfigurement, but there was not even a pool near.
Disconsolately he arose, and detaching the bundle from the saddle, he laid it upon the ground and opened it.
It contained a monk's robe, a rosary, a book, a wallet, and a girdle.
Conrad opened the wallet, and found food therein, and he was growing hungry; but when he came to consider it, he sickened at its coarseness.
Scraps of fat, sour, hard cakes, mostly soaked in stale wine—the refuse of farmhouses.
"Have I parleyed with and robbed a begging friar?" cried the Count in high disgust, and flung the wallet far into the bushes. "Food for hogs!"
Then with many sighs he removed the peacock-colored doublet and hose, and donned the monk's garb, drawing the hood over his shorn head, tying the girdle around his waist.