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It was by the minstrel a familiar earth and the grating speech of earth were earlier regained. “The affair is of the suddenest,” Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his horse. “A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love, and now of God, our Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I shall come to you again, though in doing so it were necessary that I split the world like a rotten orange.”

“Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!” Katharine said. “I am a king’s daughter, and you a minstrel.”

“Is it madness? Why, then, I think all sensible men are to be commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Heh, God’s face!” Alain swore; “the foxes Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again.”

“I bid you come,” said Katharine; and after they had stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank, tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a silver coin.

And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hotel de Saint-Pol matters were much the same. Her mother Katharine found in foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed: but King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her Presbyter John’s wife, the tyrant of Ethiopia. However, ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for his amusement, and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent.

So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined Henry’s forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how gross are the exaggerations of rumor.

In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine.

“God is asleep,” the Queen said; “and while He nods, the Butcher of Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen.” She sat down and breathed heavily. “Never was poor woman so pestered as I! The puddings to-day were quite uneatable, and on Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!” Dame Isabeau squealed on a sudden; “you are bruising me.”