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The Tenson
by
“You whine like a canting friar,” the page complained; “and I can assure you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gatinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her sufficient wit to perceive the fact. And what am I to deduce from this?”
The Prince reflected. At last he said: “I have also read in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm–that is, no virtue; but struck with lightning–that is, by the grace of God–they are astonishingly fruitful in good works.”
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.”
“Nay,” Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never quick-witted–“nay, it is not for my own 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.