easily. Nevertheless, his eye lighted almost at once upon the name
which of all others he should not hare expected to find there,
'Beatrix.' There was no mistaking the letters, and presently he found
them once again, and soon after that the sense was clear to him.

'If this reach you,' it said, in moderately fair Latin, 'greeting. I
will that you make haste and come again to our castle in Paris, both
because you shall at all times be welcome, and more especially now, and
quickly, because the noble maiden Beatrix de Curboil is now at this
court among my ladies, and is in great hope of seeing you, since she
has left her father to be under my protection. Moreover, Bernard, the
abbot, is preaching the Cross in Chartres and other places, and is
coming here before long, and to Vezelay. Beatrix greets you.'

"Can you tell me where I can find the messenger who brought you this?"
asked Gilbert, looking up when he had at last deciphered every word.

But Arnold was gone. The idea that an acquaintance whom he had been
endeavouring to convert to republican doctrines should be in
correspondence with one of those sovereigns against whom he so bitterly
inveighed had finally disgusted him, and he had gone his way, if not in
wrath, at least in displeasure. Seeing himself alone, Gilbert shrugged
his shoulders indifferently, and began to walk up and down, reading the
letter over and over. It was very short, but yet it contained so much
information that he found some difficulty in adjusting his thoughts to
what was an entirely new situation, and one which no amount of thinking
could fully explain. He was far too simple to suppose that Eleanor had
called Beatrix to her court solely for the sake of bringing him back to
Paris. He therefore imagined the most complicated and absurd reasons
for Queen Eleanor's letter.