“By bread and salt!” exclaimed he, regaining his courage; “they are gone--vanished, every man and mother’s son of them; and I am no true Christian if this is not magic, or something worse.”
“May St. Remy defend us from the devices of the devil!” exclaimed Eveille-chiens, growing pale--“St. Remy defend us against the devil and our enemies, the tailed English! and I vow, on being restored to my own sweet land, to make a pilgrimage to his shrine, and to present two silver candlesticks and an image of wax to his church.”
Louis of France, after being so roughly handled by William de Collingham and the sturdy patriots who followed that knight’s banner that he turned pale at the thought of the injury done to his dignity, embarked in haste and confusion, reached the French coast sea-sick, but in safety, and hastened, with visions of a coronation at Westminster, to the court of Paris. But the result was not quite satisfactory. Indeed, he found his royal father in no mood to grant the assistance which he required to complete the conquest of England. Philip Augustus naturally held the papal power in such dread, since the humiliating close of his quarrel with the pope about his marriage with the beautiful Agnes de Méranie, that he protested against being mixed up with the business so distinctly condemned by the holy see. However, he pointed out that, though his hands were tied, there was no particular reason why Blanche of Castile should not aid her husband to the utmost of her power, and hinted that he had no objection to furnish the means of hiring warriors and freighting ships. A word, says the proverb, is sufficient to the wise. Blanche took the hint, and--perhaps without even for the time neglecting her maternal duties to the young St. Louis, the eldest of what Fuller calls “that princely quaternion of brothers which exceeded each other in some quality: Louis the holiest, Alphonso the subtlest, Charles the stoutest, and Robert the proudest”--applied herself, with characteristic energy, to the task of fitting out an armament powerful enough to finish the work which with such high hopes her husband had boldly begun.
The prince, however, did not linger in France. Ere the truce agreed to with Pembroke had expired he was on the sea. Attacked furiously on his voyage by the ships of the Cinque Ports, he lost several of his vessels, but personally escaped all harm, and, landing at Sandwich, he, enraged at the Cinque Ports, burned that town, which enjoyed the reputation of being the first place in England at which ships were built, and then marching to Dover, he made a second attempt to take the castle. But this attempt proved as unsuccessful as the first had done, and, finding Hubert de Burgh still obstinate, Louis abandoned the enterprise, and proceeded to London, where, however, his reception was infinitely less enthusiastic than it had been on that too-memorable day of June when the citizens shouted “Chaire Basileus!” and where, indeed, in spite of Constantine Fitzarnulph, there was at work that dangerous spirit of discontent which is the parent of popular insurrections.