Now give us food and drink and clean beds, for Gaston at least is a dead man without them.

Afterwards we will sing songs.' 'Come in, come in, Richard,' said Bertran de Born.
* * * * * For a day or two Richard was bathed in golden calm, hugging his darling thought, full of Jehane, fearful to share her.

Often he remembered it in later life; it held a place and commanded a mood which no hour of his wildest possession could outvie.

The mountain air, still, but latently nimble, the great mountains themselves dreaming in the sunlight, the sailing birds, hinted a peace to his soul whither his last conquest of his baser part assured him he might soar.

Now he could guess (thought he) that quality in love which it borrows from God and shares with the angels, ministers of God, the steady burning of a flame keen and hard.
So on an afternoon of weather serene beyond all belief of the North, mild, tired, softly radiant, still as a summer noon; as he sat with Bertran in a courtyard where were lemon-trees and a fountain, and above the old white walls, and above the strutting pigeons, a square of blue, he began to speak of his affairs, of what he had done and of what was to do.
Bertran's was a grudging spirit: you shall hear the Abbot Milo upon that matter anon, than whom there are few better qualified to speak.