To the men he led he was a father, known and beloved as such; it was as a ruler they found him too lonely to be loved.

In war he was the very footboy's friend.

Personally, when the battles joined, he was rash to a fault; but so blithe, so ready, and so gracefully strong, that to think of wounds upon so bright a surface was an impiety.

No one did think of them: he seemed to play with danger as a cat with whirling leaves.

'I have seen him,' Milo writes somewhere, 'ride into a serry of knights, singing, throwing up and catching again his great sword Gaynpayn; then, all of a sudden, stiffen as with a gush of sap in his veins, dart his head forward, gather his horse together under him, and fling into the midst of them like a tiger into a herd of bulls.