You are a shameful liar.' No man could stand this from another, however great that other; and Saint-Pol was not a coward.

He looked up at his adversary, still white, but steady.
'How then ?' he asked him, 'how then if I lie not, Count of Poictou?
And how if you know that I lie not ?' 'Then,' said Richard, 'you use insult, which is worse.' Saint-Pol took off his glove of mail and flung it with a clatter on the floor.
'Since it has come to this, my lord--' Richard spiked the glove with his sword, tossed it to the hammer-beams of the roof, and caught it as it fell.
'It shall come nearer, Count, I take it.' Thus he finished the other's phrase, then stalked out of the Bishop's house.

It was then and there that he wrote to Jehane that sixth letter, which she received: 'I make war, but the cause is righteous.

Never misjudge me, Jehane.' The end of it was a combat _a outrance_ in the meads by the Loire, with all Tours on the walls to behold it.

Richard was quite frank about the part he proposed to himself.