'More, child,' said the simple lady, kissing him; 'why, I believe thou hast read every book in this world-the boy has Latin at his fingers' ends, Sir Knight, as our good chaplain here can vouch; and for English, it is his mother's tongue, and he knows it as well as his father's.'

Is it so ?' said the knight; then I shall lend him the books of Chaucer and jolly Master Lydgate. My harp boy carries them in my trunks, and I never travel without them. For of all the tongues in the world for song and pleasant wit, commend me to the English.' 'I never would learn it,' said Jehan sulkily. I hate 'em so.' 'You are a great noble and a man of war, Jehan, and have no need of such book-learning, but Franck is a man of peaceis it not so, my Franck ?—and shall be a great clerk or a cardinal, mayhap.'

His father said he should be a clerk,' said the widow timidly, ' and so I taught him our old Saxon tongue, sir'; and herewith the widow fell a-musing and thought of fair Avon, where she was born, and old Bristol town, and the green pastures of pleasant Somersetshire.

'Tell us about the Hirish,' continued Franck, who did not like the turn that his mother's conversation was taking.1

'I passed six years with them,' continued the Knight, 'going over to the country with my good lord King Richard, whom the felon Lancaster,' said he, clenching his little fist, basely murdered; but let that pass; one of these days I, Tristan of Castel-Sarrasin, promise to make him pay it. We set out from . . . sirs, in the year of grace 1394, a gallant army as ever was led by a king: ten thousand men-at-arms were we, and thirty thousand archers and vassals on foot. Ah, you should have seen the fleet making ready, and the stores of wine and provender that were put on board, and the minstrels that flocked to the host and made it merry, and have heard the trumpets ringing night and day, and the great war chargers neighing! Ladies were there too, and very fair ones too; but of such we will not speak in the presence of this chaste lady and damoiselle. Never was such a gallant sight seen as that of our ships sailing in a fair sunshine into Waterford Bay. A dirty town it is, Madam, and inhabited by a ragged people, but King Richard made the place splendid with his camp, and all the Hirishry came

1 The reader very likely knows the delightful poem in the Archæologia, from which the Knight's narrative has been taken. The last incident is from Froissart.

down and wondered. More than his father, the Black Prince, had ever done, or his stern grandfather, the lord of Ireland, our good King Richard did by his state and splendour, and by the beauty and grace of his person. When Oneil the King and the Ulster lords saw our King, they flung themselves straightway at his feet and swore homage to him. To my lord of Mowbray, Earl Marshal, Macmore and the chiefs of Leinster did the like, taking off their knives, caps, and girdles, and swearing themselves to be King Richard's liege men.

6

Fancy to yourselves in what a state these wild Irish chieftains were, and how they ought to thank us for teaching them the ways of honour and the glorious practices of chivalry. All their lands and seignories they bound themselves to yield up to our King, the rightful lord of such savages; they promised to aid him with all their swordsmen in the wars against those rebel kernes, who dared to hold out. In return for which service the King took them into his gracious pay, and made over to them all the lands which they might conquer from the rebel chiefs. Pretty lands, God wot, and a pretty people! Ride through the country, and you shall find nothing but great water, forests, and marshes. For miles you shall see no town nor person to speak withal. For the men fly to the woods, and dwell in caves and huts and hollow trees like wild savage beasts as they are, or were, until our lord King Richard came to benefit them.

Thanks to his Grace, the Ulster and Leinster chiefs learned Christian manners from him, and bless his name to this day. For you must know that when we first came among them, they sate at table with their jesters and bondsmen against all the practices of chivalry, which beastly custom we caused them quickly to forswear. And in matters of dress they were habited in long yellow gowns and mantles of woollen, which we could with difficulty cause them to change for our French doublets and cloaks of satin and miniver. All this did great King Richard, however, effect for them, knighting their sons and them (albeit they pretended to have some rude heathenish chivalry of their own), and making courteous gentlemen of those who had been brutes before. Will it not make this noble company blush when I tell them that these rude monsters-these kings, forsooth-would not for a long time consent to the wearing of breeches, without which no serf or villain, honourable gentlemen, let alone a majestic prince, duke, or king, can be, as I need scarcely say, fittingly and decently equipped.

dukes or

'And here it was with one of the aforesaid savage princes that a strange adventure befel me, the poor knight of Castel-Sarrasin in Gascony, who have the honour in this glass of wine to pledge this noble company. For, riding one day with my falcon on my fist, the prickers and huntsmen being on before, and my unworthy self plunged in thought composing (if the truth must be known) a little virelai or chanson d'amour in honour of Lady Blanche, my lord Marshal's mistress, who loved such trifles of my composition, and vowed I sung them prettily to my rebeck-riding, I say, musingly along, and rhyming Blanche, haunch, it chanced that in this pursuit my horse took fright and ran away with me, in spite of all my efforts, into the midst of the enemy. My friends could never overtake me, and in passing through the Hirish one of them, by a great feat of agility, leaped on the back of my horse and held me tight with both his arms, but did me no harm with lance or knife. He seemed rejoiced to have made me prisoner, and carried me to his house, which was strong, and in a town surrounded with wood palisades and stagnant water. This gentleman, by name Brien Costeret, gave me one of his daughters in marriage.'

1 Cristal in Froissart.

V.

FRANCK DEPARTS WITH HIS BROTHER TO THE WAR.

FAREWELL, O gentle mother, and peaceful haunts of childhood. The old Chronicle spelled at sunset in the hall-window, the old tales of knight and fairy told at night by the great hall fire which made every banner and helmet on the wall cast gigantic shadows round about the little trembling wondering listeners, who sat at the knees of the old almoner. Good-bye, Don the greyhound, and Boris the old toothless mumbling wolf-dog, who could do nothing but bay of nights and sit lazy in the sun watching Franck and Isabeau as they played in the court or busied themselves in their little garden under their mother's window. How pleased and silent and tender used she to sit and watch them from it! how carefully she will tend Franck's flowers when he is away, and clip and water his rose-tree! Isabeau is growing to be a young woman now, and will soon care for other things besides childish pinks and rosebushes; other hopes and desires will swell that fair bosom of hers, and carry her heart far away. But here in this lonely place is all the poor mother's world, and all her little store of happiness is shut in by the old castle gate. How she has treasured up all the lad's sayings; how she will look wistfully of nights at his little vacant bed, and lie awake long hours thinking of him, her gentle heart full of thoughts inexpressibly sad and sweet. Many a risk and danger has he to run in this wild world, so full of snares and temptations; but err and forget as he will, there is one who always remembers, and night and day is praying and yearning for him.

The days in which Franck lived had at least this advantage over our own times-that if a man felt any particular passion for good or evil there was nothing to hinder him from expressing it, and that he was not bound to adopt the rigid stoicism which is considered as manly among us. The friendship of men for one another was extraordinarily warm. We read of brothers of arms riding the same horse, as Charles V. and Savoisy going to see the Queen's entry into Paris; sharing the same bed like Harry of Monmouth and Lord Scrope, who betrayed him; and upon occasions bursting out into the most extraordinary fits of tears as Richard II. did, for instance, at Conway, when he was seized by Lancaster, and swore

while weeping at the most piteous rate that as soon as he made his peace with Henry he would have him put to such a death as should be spoken of even in Turkey,' and that as for his attendants 'he would have them flayed alive.' When Harry of Monmouth again had offended his father he appeared before him with a gold dog's collar on his wrist and a gown embroydered with oylets,' with the needles hanging by the silk from the oylet-holes, and, taking his knife from his girdle, begged the King repeatedly to stab him, as he could not live without his good graces. What would George the Third have said of such a request from his son? It would have passed as the act of a madman, or as an insolent joke at best-so different are our ways from those of our ancestors.

Let it not be then considered as a mark of weakness on the part of Franck de Borsellen when it is stated that for the first day of his journey from home he wept and cried moult piteusement, and was not considered by his companions a whit the less manly for this exhibition. He would not take a morsel of supper that night, but went to his bed at the village where the cavalcade stopped, and slept well, after making many vows to keep his mother's injunctions faithfully, and say his prayers twice a day to Our Lady and Saint Lambert, and fast and confess him regularly, as a true gentle man should. Next day he rode on without breakfast, very dismal and pale; but at the halt of noon he had found his appetite again, and a few cups of wine drove the sorrow well-nigh out of his heart. The old knight Messire Tristan had taken, too, an especial fancy to him, and entertained him as they rode along with choice stories of the Court, and lays of the minstrelsy, and other matters of the day.

Although they were in the Duke of Brabant's own country, after they had advanced about a couple of days upon their march they found the village utterly deserted, which made the optimist Sir Tristan say that they had better choice of quarters at any rate, and describe the straits to which he and other noble knights had been put in former campaigns; the country, too, was laid waste far and near, and the party could scarcely find a grain of corn, whereon Messire Tristan vowed that it was very lucky they had brought a store of forage with them.