But of this day of cant and fustian, the man-women, not heroines, called by no duty to the attire or the attributes of men, but panting indelicately for the notoriety, the fierce, passionate excitement of the political, nay! for aught that appears, of the martial arena—these are the hens, if they could but see themselves as they see effeminate, unsexed men, gaffed and cropped and fed to do voluntary battle in the sinks and slaughterhouses of humanity, against the gamecocks of their species.
The Lady Macbeths of a falser period, who fancy that, by proving themselves so much less the woman, they can shine out so much more the man.
“But I wish now to return,” with my old friend Froissart, “to the Countess de Montfort, who possessed the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion,” and I will add—the soul, the instincts and the excellence of a true woman.
During the winter succeeding the seizure of her lord, and the treason of Sir Hervè de Léon, who had attached himself to the Count de Blois, she remained peacefully occupied in Hennebon, in the education of her young child John; and how she educated him was seen in his after career, as a knight valorous and gentle, a prince beloved and popular.
But with the summer there came strife and peril, and protection became paramount to every thing beside.
During the winter, while the Countess de Montfort lay tranquil in Hennebon, the Count Charles de Blois lay as tranquilly in Nantes, which—as I have before related—had been treasonably surrendered to him by Sir Hervè de Léon and the citizens of the place. But now, that the fair weather had returned, that the swallows were disporting themselves in the summer air, the cuckoos calling by the river-sides, now that armies could hold themselves in the fields with plenty of all sorts around them, he summoned to him all those great princes of the royal blood, and all the noble barons and valiant knights who had fought with him in the last campaign. And, mindful of their promises, they drew all their forces to a head, and came with a great array of spears of France, and Genoese cross-bowmen, and Spanish men-at-arms, under the leading of the Lord Lewis d’Espagne, to re-conquer for him all that remained unconquered of the fair land of Brittany.