FullReads

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.”

Raimbaut answered: “You and I are not alike.”

“No, praise each and every Saint!” said the Prince of Orange, heartily. “And yet, I am not sure—-” He rose, for his sight had failed him so that he could not distinctly see you except when he spoke with head thrown back, as though he looked at you over a wall. “For instance, do you understand that I hold Biatritz here as a prisoner, because her dower-lands are necessary to me, and that I intend to marry her as soon as Pope Innocent grants me a dispensation?”

“All Venaissin knows that. Yes, you have always gained everything which you desired in this world, Guillaume. Yet it was at a price, I think.”

“I am no haggler. . . . But you have never comprehended me, not even in the old days when we loved each other. For instance, do you understand–slave of a spoken word!–what it must mean to me to know that at this hour to-morrow there will be alive in Venaissin no person whom I hate?”

Messire de Vaquieras reflected. His was never a rapid mind. “Why, no, I do not know anything about hatred,” he said, at last. “I think I never hated any person.”

Guillaume de Baux gave a half-frantic gesture. “Now, Heaven send you troubadours a clearer understanding of what sort of world we live in—-!” He broke off short and growled, “And yet–sometimes I envy you, Raimbaut!”