'Lord Duke,' he said, 'this lord is the Count of Poictou, your son.' It had been a fine sight for sinful men to see the eyes of the old King strike fire at this word.

His speech, they tell me, was terrible, glutted with rage.
'Ha, God!' he spluttered, cracking his fingers, 'so my Richard is the badger, ha?
So then I have him, ha?
If I do not draw him myself, by the Face!' It is said that Longespee (a son of his by Madame Rosamund) and Geoffrey (another bastard), with Bohun and De Lacy and some more, tried to hinder him in this design, wherein (said they) he set out to be a second Thyestes; but they might as well have bandied words with destiny.

'War is war,' said the foaming old man, 'whether with a son or a grandmother you make it.

Shall my enemy range the field and I sit at home and lap caudle?
That is not the way of my house.' He would by all means go that night, and called for volunteers.

His English barons, to their credit, flatly refused either to entrap the son of their master or to abandon the city at a time so critical.