“Then do you stop talking such nonsense, and do you stop telling me about things that everybody knows, and do you give my daughter her feather!”
Manuel ascends the white throne of Alianora. “Queer things have befallen me,” said Manuel, “but nothing more strange than this can ever happen, than that I should be standing here with you, and holding this small hand in mine. You are not perhaps quite so beautiful nor so clever as Niafer. Nevertheless, you are the Unattainable Princess, whose loveliness recalled me from vain grieving after Niafer, within a half-hour of Niafer’s loss. Yes, you are she whose beauty kindled a dream and a dissatisfaction in the heart of a swineherd, to lead him forth into the wide world, and through the puzzling ways of the wide world, and into its high places: so that at the last the swineherd is standing—aglitter in satin and gold and in rich furs—here at the summit of a throne; and at the last the hand of the Unattainable Princess is in his hand, and in his heart is misery.”
The Princess said, “I do not know anything about this Niafer, who was probably no better than she should have been, nor do I know of any conceivable reason for your being miserable.”
“Why, is it not the truth,” asks Manuel of Alianora, speaking not very steadily, “that you are to marry the man who restores the feather of which you were robbed at the pool of Haranton? and can marry none other?”
“It is the truth,” she answered, in a small frightened lovely voice, “and I no longer grieve that it is the truth, and I think it a most impolite reason for your being miserable.”
Manuel laughed without ardor. “See how we live and learn! I recall now the droll credulity of a lad who watched a shining feather burned, while he sat within arm’s reach thinking about cabbage soup, because his grave elders assured him that a feather could never be of any use to anybody. And that, too, after he had seen what uses may be made of an old bridle or of a duck egg or of anything! Well, but all water that is past the dam must go its way, even though it be a flood of tears—”
Here Manuel gently shrugged broad shoulders. He took out of his pocket the feather he had plucked from the wing of Ferdinand’s goose.
He said: “A feather I took from you in the red autumn woods, and a feather I now restore to you, my Princess, in this white palace of yours, not asking any reward, and not claiming to be remembered by you in the gray years to come, but striving to leave no obligation undischarged and no debt unpaid. And whether in this world wherein nothing is certain, one feather is better than another feather, I do not know. It well may come about that I must straightway take a foul doom from fair lips, and that presently my head will be drying on a silver pike. Even so, one never knows: and I have learned that it is well to put all doubt of oneself quite out of mind.”
He gave her the feather he had plucked from the third goose, and the trumpets sounded as a token that the quest of Alianora’s feather had been fulfilled, and all the courtiers shouted in honor of Count Manuel.
Alianora looked at what was in her hand, and saw it was a goose-feather, in nothing resembling the feather which, when she had fled in maidenly embarrassment from Manuel’s over-friendly advances, she had plucked from the robe of the Apsarasas, and had dropped at Manuel’s feet, in order that her father might be forced to proclaim this quest, and the winning of it might be predetermined.
Then Alianora looked at Manuel. Now before her the queer unequal eyes of this big young man were bright and steadfast as altar candles. His chin was well up, and it seemed to her that this fine young fellow expected her to declare the truth, when the truth would be his death-sentence. She had no patience with his nonsense.
Says Alianora, with that lovely tranquil smile of hers: “Count Manuel has fulfilled the quest. He has restored to me the feather from the robe of the Apsarasas. I recognize it perfectly.”
“Why, to be sure,” says Raymond Bérenger. “Still, do you get your needle and the recipe for the old incantation, and the robe too, and make it plain to all my barons that the power of the robe is returned to it, by flying about the hall a little in the appearance of a swan. For it is better to conduct these affairs in due order and without any suspicion of irregularity.”
Now matters looked ticklish for Dom Manuel, since he and Alianora knew that the robe had been spoiled, and that the addition of any number of goose-feathers was not going to turn Alianora into a swan. Yet the boy’s handsome and high-colored face stayed courteously attentive to the wishes of his host, and did not change.
But Alianora said indignantly: “My father, I am surprised at you! Have you no sense of decency at all? You ought to know it is not becoming for an engaged girl to be flying about Provence in the appearance of a swan, far less among a parcel of men who have been drinking all morning. It is the sort of thing that leads to a girl’s being talked about.”
“Now, that is true, my dear,” said Raymond Bérenger, abashed, “and the sentiment does you credit. So perhaps I had better suggest something else—”
“Indeed, my father, I see exactly what you would be suggesting. And I believe you are right.”
“I am not infallible, my dear: but still—”
“Yes, you are perfectly right: it is not well for any married woman to be known to possess any such robe. There is no telling, just as you say, what people
