Chivalry

happiness that I ride southward.'

The page then said. 'What is her name?'

And Prince Edward answered, very fondly, 'Hawise.'

'Her, too, I hate,' 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 strummed idly as these two debated together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere an agreeable conference of leaves.

'Listen, my Prince,' the boy said more lately: 'here is one view of the affair.' And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, what time the lute monotonously sobbed beneath his fingers.

Sang Miguel:

'A little while and Irus and Menephtah are at sorry unison, and Guenevere is but a skull. Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously we tread a 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 she 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 to-night, 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 fairest of created women, and very wise, but she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.

'Yet though she cannot understand, this woman who has known me to the marrow, I must obey her laudable behests and serve her blindly. At sight of her my love closes over my heart like a flood, so that I am speechless and glory in my impotence, as one who stands at last before the kindly face of God. For her sake 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; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that wine is a goodly thing, and that I am aweary of the trodden path.

'She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the Horselberg 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 o' 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 he, 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; and 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 pale- mouthed priests, 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, what 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, very clearly, that neither existed; and 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, as yet I have not 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.'

'Nay, my little Miguel, I do but 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 path, whether it be my trodden one 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 some roisterer haled before the magistrate.'

'I consider you to be in the right,' the boy said, after a lengthy interval, 'although I decline—and 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 understand! in part I understand!' the page wailed, and now it was Prince Edward who comforted Miguel de Rueda.

For the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the darkness to note how soft it was, since the man was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be, and said:

'One must play the game, 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 cog at dice.'

The same night Miguel de Rueda sobbed through 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! Hearken, 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 debonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a woman—!'

You would have said the boy was dying; and in sober verity a deal of Miguel de Rueda died upon this night of clearer vision.

Yet he sang the next day as these two rode southward, although half as in defiance.

Sang Miguel:

'And still, whate'er the years may send— 
Though Time be proven a fickle friend, 
And Love be shown a liar— 
I must adore until the end 
That primal heart's desire.