"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The
laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we
know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through
your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,--or
to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly
earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate."
"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy
interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you."
The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as
though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal
Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my
Little Miguel."
Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very
dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de
Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!"
the boy wailed in the darkness.
And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the
darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool
than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said:
"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people,
she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth;
and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at
their dicing."
The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus
made long ago to the Mother of God:
"Dame, je n'ose,
Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose,
En qui li filz Diex se repose,"
and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that
art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the
blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the
very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am
ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of
praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a
woman--!"
So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang
half as if in defiance.
Sang Miguel:
"And still,--whatever years impend
To witness Time a fickle friend,
And Youth a dwindling fire,--
I must adore till all years end
My first love, Heart's Desire.
"I may not hear men speak of her
Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir
To greet her passing-by,
And I, in all her worshipper
Must serve her till I die.
"For I remember: this is she
That reigns in one man's memory
Immune to age and fret,
And stays the maid I may not see
Nor win to, nor forget."
It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam
de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long
while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous
was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de
Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other.
Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauléon,
on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or
four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward
hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered
over the remnants of their meal.
Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had lodged there
for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage
as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one,
doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like
every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was
very much afraid of his gigantic patron.
"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness
that was ingratiating.
The host shuddered and obeyed.
Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming
upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all
resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was
now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on
to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there.
De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He,
too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him
awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave
and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be
distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de
Gâtinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear.
Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that
self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test
was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick,
illimitable surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which
dwarfed comprehension.
"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a
woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him
quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so
that my Etienne may die unshamed!"
"I must question, messire," de Gâtinais was saying, "whether you have
been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her
who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I
take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now!
be advised by me, messire--"