"Oh, no exception can be taken to Brother Giles Amaury; he understands the ordering of a battle, and the fighting in front when it begins.

But, Sir Thomas, were it fair to take the Holy Land from the heathen Saladin, so full of all the virtues which may distinguish unchristened man, and give it to Giles Amaury, a worse pagan than himself, an idolater, a devil-worshipper, a necromancer, who practises crimes the most dark and unnatural in the vaults and secret places of abomination and darkness ?" "The Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St.John of Jerusalem is not tainted by fame, either with heresy or magic," said Thomas de Vaux.
"But is he not a sordid miser ?" said Richard hastily; "has he not been suspected--ay, more than suspected--of selling to the infidels those advantages which they would never have won by fair force?
Tush, man, better give the army to be made merchandise of by Venetian skippers and Lombardy pedlars, than trust it to the Grand Master of St.John." "Well, then, I will venture but another guess," said the Baron de Vaux.
"What say you to the gallant Marquis of Montserrat, so wise, so elegant, such a good man-at-arms ?" "Wise ?--cunning, you would say," replied Richard; "elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will.

Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat--who knows not the popinjay?
Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to guess the hue of his inmost vestments from their outward colours.

A man-at-arms?
Ay, a fine figure on horseback, and can bear him well in the tilt-yard, and at the barriers, when swords are blunted at point and edge, and spears are tipped with trenchers of wood instead of steel pikes.

Wert thou not with me when I said to that same gay Marquis, 'Here we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there pricks a band of some threescore Saracens--what say you to charge them briskly?
There are but twenty unbelieving miscreants to each true knight." "I recollect the Marquis replied," said De Vaux, "that his limbs were of flesh, not of iron, and that he would rather bear the heart of a man than of a beast, though that beast were the lion, But I see how it is--we shall end where we began, without hope of praying at the Sepulchre until Heaven shall restore King Richard to health." At this grave remark Richard burst out into a hearty fit of laughter, the first which he had for some time indulged in.