The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection - James Branch Cabell

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of the trodden path.

      "She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the Hrselberg 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 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 dbonnaire! 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 Provenal 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 Maulon, 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 Gtinais 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 Gtinais 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 Gtinais, 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 Gtinais 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 Gtinais 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--"

      Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk."

      "--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern your

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