'"
The bushy brows met in a fierce scowl over the burning eyes; his
words came in a great burst of indignation and scorn.
"Ay, truly--he spake truly--the wise man--the wizard! A woman to be
the ruin of the kingdom! Ay, verily, and has it not been so? Who
but that wicked Queen Isabeau is at the bottom of the disgraceful
Treaty of Troyes, wherein France sold herself into the hands of the
English? Did she not repudiate her own son? Did not her hatred burn
so fiercely against him that she was ready to tarnish her own good
fame and declare him illegitimate, rather than that he should
succeed his father as King of France? Did she not give her daughter
to the English King in wedlock, that their child might reign over
this fair realm? Truly has the kingdom been destroyed by the wiles
of a woman! But I vow it will take more than the strength of any
maiden to save and redeem it from the woes beneath which it lies
crushed!"
"In sooth it doth seem so," answered Bertrand with grave and
earnest countenance, "but yet with the good God nothing is
impossible.
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