“No, by Saint Andrew, my liege,” said the Scottish knight; “but the establishment of a lasting peace, and the withdrawing our armies from Palestine.”
“Saint George!” said Richard, in astonishment. “Ill as I have justly thought of them, I could not have dreamed they would have humbled themselves to such dishonour. Speak, Sir Kenneth, with what will did you carry such a message?”
“With right good will, my lord,” said Kenneth; “because, when we had lost our noble leader, under whose guidance alone I hoped for victory, I saw none who could succeed him likely to lead us to conquest, and I accounted it well in such circumstances to avoid defeat.”
“And on what conditions was this hopeful peace to be contracted?” said King Richard, painfully suppressing the passion with which his heart was almost bursting.
“These were not entrusted to me, my lord,” answered the Knight of the Couchant Leopard. “I delivered them sealed to the hermit.”
“And for what hold you this reverend hermit—for fool, madman, traitor, or saint?” said Richard.
“His folly, sire,” replied the shrewd Scottish man, “I hold to be assumed to win favour and reverence from the Paynimrie, who regard madmen as the inspired of Heaven—at least it seemed to me as exhibited only occasionally, and not as mixing, like natural folly, with the general tenor of his mind.”
“Shrewdly replied,” said the monarch, throwing himself back on his couch, from which he had half-raised himself. “Now of his penitence?”
“His penitence,” continued Kenneth, “appears to me sincere, and the fruits of remorse for some dreadful crime, for which he seems, in his own opinion, condemned to reprobation.”
“And for his policy?” said King Richard.