The page began to laugh. “You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though you will never know it—and I hate you a little—and I envy you a great deal.”
“Ah, but,” Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never quick-witted—“but it is not for my own happiness that I ride southward.”
The page then said, “What is her name?”
Prince Edward answered, very fondly, “Hawise.”
“I hate her, too,” said Miguel de Rueda; “and I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy her.”
In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other fled.
Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves.
“Listen, my Prince,” the boy said: “here is one view of the affair.” And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting.
Sang Miguel:
“Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously we tread dusty road toward oblivion; but yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.
“Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. ‘Vanity of Vanities!’ saith the beloved. But she whom I love seems very far away tonight, though I might be with her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.
“At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while and I will repent; tonight I cannot but remember that there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden path.
“She is very far from me tonight. Yonder in the Hörselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden path.”
Followed a silence. “Ignorance spoke there,” the Prince said. “It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, my little Miguel.” And presently the Prince, too, sang.
Sang the Prince:
“I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the land’s Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names. And one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the significance of these things, and he went astray to gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path.”
“He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden path.
“He babbled of Autumn’s bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated whether they were the eyes of God or gases which burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.
“And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. ‘Let us not enter,’ he said, ‘for the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my apples.’ And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for I had walked in the trodden path.”
Again there was a silence. “You paint a dreary world, my Prince.”
“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
