"The King!" she cried, still smiling. "The King! Are you so great in
mind and so poor in sense as to think that he could lead men and win?
The King is no leader. He is your acolyte--I like to see him swinging a
censer in time to your prayers and flattening his flat face upon the
altar-steps beatified by your footsteps!"

The Queen laughed, for she had moods in which she feared neither God,
nor saint, nor man. But Bernard looked grave at first, then hurt, and
then there was pity in his eyes. He pointed to the window-seat beside
the table, and he himself sat down upon his carved bench. Eleanor,
being seated, rested her elbows on the table, clasped her beautiful
hands together, and slowly rubbed her cheek against them, meditating
what she should say next. She had had no fixed purpose in coming to the
abbot's lodging, but she had always liked to talk with him when he was
at leisure and to see the look of puzzled and pained surprise that came
into his face when she said anything more than usually shocking to his
delicate sensibilities. With impulses of tremendous force, there was at
the root of her character a youthful and almost childlike indifference
to consequences.

"You misjudge your husband," said the abbot, at last, drumming on the
table nervously and absently with the tips of his white fingers. "They
who do their own will only are quick to condemn those who hope to
accomplish the will of Heaven."

"If you regard the King as the instrument of Divine Providence,"
answered Eleanor, with curling lip, "there is nothing to be said.
Providence, for instance, was angered with the people of Vitry.
Providence selected the King of France to be the representative of its
wrath. The King, obedient as ever, set fire to the church, and burned