"It comes the more quickly, messire, when it is prompted."
The troubadour only smiled at words which seemed so meaningless. He
did not smile when later in the night Makrisi brought Mahi de Vernoil,
disguised as a mendicant friar. This outlaw pleaded with Sire Raimbaut
to head the tatters of Lovain's army, and showed Raimbaut how easy it
would be to wrest Venaissin from Prince Guillaume. "We cannot save
Lovain," de Vemoil said, "for Guillaume has him fast. But Venaissin is
very proud of you, my tres beau sire. Ho, maker of world-famous songs!
stout champion of the faith! my men and I will now make you Prince of
Orange in place of the fiend who rules us. You may then at your
convenience wed Madona Biatritz, that most amiable lady whom you have
loved so long. And by the Cross! you may do this before the week is
out."
The old knight answered: "It is true that I have always served Madona
Biatritz, who is of matchless worth. I might not, therefore, presume
to call myself any longer her servant were my honor stained in any
particular. Oh no, Messire de Vernoil, an oath is an oath. I have
this day sworn fealty to Guillaume de Baux."
Then after other talk Raimbaut dismissed the fierce-eyed little man.
The freebooter growled curses as he went. On a sudden he whistled,
like a person considering, and he began to chuckle.
Raimbaut said, more lately: "Zoraida left no wholesome legacy in you,
Makrisi." This Zoraida was a woman the knight had known in
Constantinople--a comely outlander who had killed herself because of
Sire Raimbaut's highflown avoidance of all womankind except the
mistress of his youth.
"Nay, save only in loving you too well, messire, was Zoraida a wise
woman, notably. . . . But this is outworn talk, the prattle of Cain's
babyhood. As matters were, you did not love Zoraida. So Zoraida died.
Such is the custom in my country."
"You trouble me, Makrisi. Your eyes are like blown coals. . . . Yet
you have served me long and faithfully. You know that mine was ever
the vocation of dealing honorably in battle among emperors, and of
spreading broadcast the rumor of my valor, and of achieving good by my
sword's labors. I have lived by warfare. Long, long ago, since I
derived no benefit from love, I cried farewell to it."
"Ay," said Makrisi. "Love makes a demi-god of all--just for an hour.
Such hours as follow we devote to the concoction of sleeping-draughts."
He laughed, and very harshly.
And Raimbaut did not sleep that night because this life of ours seemed
such a piece of tangle-work as he had not the skill to unravel. So he
devoted the wakeful hours to composition of a planh, lamenting vanished
youth and that Biatritz whom the years had stolen.
Then on the ensuing morning, after some talk about the new campaign,
Prince Guillaume de Baux leaned back in his high chair and said,
abruptly:
"In perfect candor, you puzzle your liege-lord. For you loathe me and
you still worship my sister-in-law, an unattainable princess. In these
two particulars you display such wisdom as would inevitably prompt you
to make an end of me. Yet, what the devil! you, the time-battered
vagabond, decline happiness and a kingdom to boot because of
yesterday's mummery in the cathedral! because of a mere promise given!
Yes, I have my spies in every rat-hole. I am aware that my barons hate
me, and hate Philibert almost as bitterly,--and that, in fine, a
majority of my barons would prefer to see you Prince in my unstable
place, on account of your praiseworthy molestations of heathenry. Oh,
yes, I understand my barons perfectly. I flatter myself I understand
everybody in Venaissin save you."