French speech,' she answered. 'They are French, and France shall have them.'
'But not Bordeaux?' cried Sir Nigel excitedly.
'Bordeaux also is for France.'
'But Calais?'
'Calais too.'
'Woe worth me then, and ill hail to these evil words! If Bordeaux and Calais be gone, then what is left for England?'
'It seems indeed that there are evil times coming upon your country,' said Du Guesclin. 'In our fondest hopes we never thought to hold Bordeaux. By Saint Ives! this news hath warmed the heart within me. Our dear country will then be very great in the future, Tiphaine?'
'Great, and rich, and beautiful,' she cried. 'Far down the course of time I can see her still leading the nations, a wayward queen among the peoples, great in war, but greater in peace, quick in thought, deft in action, with her people's will for her sole monarch, from the sands of Calais to the blue seas of the south.'
'Ha!' cried Du Guesclin, with his eyes flashing in triumph, 'you hear her, Sir Nigel?—and she never yet said word which was not sooth.'
The English knight shook his head moodily. 'What of my own poor country?' said he. 'I fear, lady, that what you have said bodes but small good for her.'
The lady sat with parted lips, and her breath came quick and fast. 'My God!' she cried, 'what is this that is shown me? Whence come they, these peoples, these lordly nations, these mighty countries which rise up before me? I look beyond, and others rise, and yet others, far and farther to the shores of the uttermost waters. They crowd! They swarm! the world is given to them, and it resounds with the clang of their hammers and the ringing of their church bells. They call them many names, and they rule them this way or that, but they are all English, for I can hear the voices of the people. On I go, and onwards over seas where
