James Branch Cabell

“ She had almost forgotten Hugues. Her heart was sad as she thought of Adhelmar, who must die a shameful death for her sake, and of the love which she had cast away. Beside it, the Sieur d'Arques' affection showed somewhat tawdry, and Mélite began to reflect that, after all, she had liked Adhelmar almost as well.
"Sweet," said Adhelmar, "do I not know you to the marrow? You will forget me utterly, for your heart is very changeable. Ah, Mother of God!" Adhelmar cried, with a quick lift of speech; "I am afraid to die, for the harsh dust will shut out the glory of your face, and you will forget!" ”

“ Conceive, sir, that in your youth, had you been accorded the love of so fair a lady, you yourself had scarcely done otherwise. For I doubt if your blood runs so thin as yet that you have quite forgot young Raymond d'Arnaye and the gracious ladies whom he loved,—I think that your heart must needs yet treasure the memories of divers moonlit nights, even such as this, when there was a great silence in the world, and the nested trees were astir with desire of the dawn, and your waking dreams were vext with the singular favor of some woman's face. ”

“ Listen, my lord," she went on with more restraint, when she had reined up her horse by the side of his, "yonder in France the world lies at your feet. Our great King is dead. France rises now, and France needs a brave captain. You, you! it is you that she needs. She has sent for you, my lord, that mother France whom you love. And you will go back to sleep in the sun at Winstead when France has need of you. Oh, it is foul!"
But he shook his head. "France is very dear to me," he said, "yet there are other men who can serve France. ”

“ Heaven helps them that help themselves, says my father, and I ha'n't a penny for you. My way was yet to make in the world; to saddle myself with a dowerless wench—even a wench whose least 'Good-morning' set a man's heart hammering at his ribs—would have been folly, Master Mervale. Utter, improvident, shiftless, bedlamite folly, lad!"
"H'm!" Master Mervale cleared his throat, twirled his mustachios, and smiled at some unspoken thought. "We pay for our follies in this world, my lord, but I sometimes think that we pay even more dearly for our wisdom." ”

“ Mélite sat silent for a moment. Presently, "Ah, cousin, cousin!" she sighed, "I cannot love you as you would have me love. God alone knows why, true heart, for I revere you as a strong man and a proven knight and a faithful lover; but I do not love you. There are many women who would love you, Adhelmar, for the world praises you, and you have done brave deeds and made good songs and have served your King potently; and yet"—she drew her hands away and laughed a little wearily—"yet I, poor maid, must needs love Hugues, who has done nothing. ”

“ There would be both tempers and reputations lost, Master Mervale; there would be sword-thrusts; there would be corpses, Master Mervale."
"Doubtless, my lord," the lad assented, striving to jest and have done; "for all flesh is frail, and as the flesh of woman is frailer than that of man, so is it, as I remember to have read, the more easily entrapped by the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved by the serpent's beguiling deceit of Eve at the beginning."
"Yet, Master Mervale," pursued the marquis, equably, but without smiling, "there be lovers in the world that have eyes?" ”

“ Men certainly will never cease to love you. Will he—your husband that may be—prove less susceptible, we will say, than I? Ah, but, madonna, let us unrein imagination! Suppose, were it possible, that he—even now—yearns to enter into the Castle of Content, and that your hand, your hand alone, may draw the bolt for him,—that the thought of you is to him as a flame before which honor and faith shrivel as shed feathers, and that he has loved you these many years, unknown to you, long, long before the Marquis of Falmouth came into your life with his fair face and smooth sayings. ”

“ Frankly, my passion for the Lady Ursula burns more mildly than that which Antony bore the Egyptian; it is less a fire to consume kingdoms than a candle wherewith to light a contented home; and quite frankly, I mean to have her. The estates lie convenient, the families are of equal rank, her father is agreed, and she has a sufficiency of beauty; there are, in short, no obstacles to our union save you and my lord of Pevensey, and these, I confess, I do not fear. I can wait, Master Mervale. Oh, I am patient, Master Mervale, but, I own, I cannot brook denial. It is I, or no one. ”

“ The point on which I wish to dwell is that she weds Monsieur de Puysange early to-morrow morning."
"Uncle," Matthiette cried, as she started to her feet, "such a marriage is a crime! I love Raoul!"
"Undoubtedly," purred Sieur Raymond, "you love the lad unboundedly, madly, distractedly! Now we come to the root of the matter." He sank back in his chair and smiled. "Young people," said he, "be seated, and hearken to the words of wisdom. Love is a divine insanity, in which the sufferer fancies the world mad. And the world is made up of madmen who condemn and punish one another." ”

“ Adhelmar pursued, somewhat wistfully, "my sword just now, Hugues, is vowed to my King's quarrel. There are some of us who hope to save France yet, if our blood may avail. In a year, God willing, I shall come again to Puysange; and till then you must wait."
Hugues conceded that, perforce, he must wait, since a vow was sacred; and Adhelmar, who suspected Hugues' natural appetite for battle to be lamentably squeamish, grinned. After that, in a sick rage, Adhelmar struck Hugues in the face, and turned about.
The Sieur d'Arques rubbed his cheek ruefully. ”

“ I said: "Madonna, go forward and God speed you! Yonder your lover waits for you, and the world is exceedingly fair; here is only a fool. As for this new Marquis of Falmouth, let him trouble you no longer. 'Tis an Eastern superstition that we lackbrains are endowed with peculiar gifts of prophecy: and as such, I predict, very confidently, madonna, that you will see and hear no more of him in this life."
I caught my breath. In the moonlight she seemed God's master-work. Her eyes were big with half-comprehended sorrow, and a slender hand stole timorously toward me. ”

“ Matthiette cried. "Ah, do not mock me, my uncle! There can be no pretence of love between Monsieur de Puysange and me. A man that I have never seen, that is to wed me of pure policy, may look for no Alcestis in his wife."
"You speak like a very sensible girl," said Sieur Raymond, complacently. "However, so that he find her no Guinevere or Semiramis or other loose-minded trollop of history, I dare say Monsieur de Puysange will hold to his bargain with indifferent content. Look you, niece, he, also, is buying—though the saying is somewhat rustic—a pig in a poke." ”

“ And Sylvie laughed again at the preposterous notions of old people. She flashed an especial smile at Florian. Her hand went out as though to touch him, in an unforgotten gesture. "Old people do not understand," said Sylvie de Nointel, in tones which took this handsome young fellow ineffably into confidence.
"Mademoiselle," said Florian, with a sigh that was part relief and all approval, "it is you who speak the truth, and your elders have fallen victims to the cynicism of a crassly material age. Love is immortal when it is really love and when one is the right sort of person. ”

“ Yet I must be quiet—quiet as a sucking lamb, that I may strike afterward as a roaring lion. Is this your innocence, Mistress Ursula, that cannot endure the spoken name of a spade? Oh, splendor of God!"
Thus he raged behind the white-lilac bush while they laughed and kissed under the maple-tree. After a space they parted. The Lady Ursula, still laughing, lifted the branches of the rearward thicket and disappeared in the path which the Earl of Pevensey had taken. Master Mervale, kissing his hand and laughing yet more loudly, lounged toward the entrance of the maze. ”

“ Ah, lad, lad!—if you but knew! That is not love; to love is to go mad like a star-struck moth, and afterward to strive in vain to forget, and to eat one's heart out in the loneliness, and to hunger—hunger—" The marquis spread his big hands helplessly, and then, with a quick, impatient gesture, swept back the mass of wheat-colored hair that fell about his face. "Ah, Master Mervale," he sighed, "I was right after all,—it is the cruelest plague in the world, and that same smallpox leaves less troubling scars." ”

“ But the heart of François was pure magnanimity, the heels of François were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk François paused.
On a stone bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as he paddled with the girl's hand. "You tempt me to murder," he was saying. "It is a deadly sin, my soul, and I have no mind to fry in Hell while my body swings on the Saint Denis road, a crow's dinner. Let François live, my soul! ”

“ I believe that you have never heard of François Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not heard of François Villon! The pigs, the gross pigs, that dare not peep out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orleans. The very street-boys know my Ballad of the Women of Paris. Not a drunkard in the realm but has ranted my jolly Orison for Master Cotard's Soul when the bottle passed. The King himself hauled me out of Meung gaol last September, swearing that in all France there was not my equal at a ballad. ”

“ Left to themselves, the Marquis of Falmouth and Master Richard Mervale regarded each the other, irresolutely, like strange curs uncertain whether to fraternize or to fly at one another's throat. Then Master Mervale lay down in the young grass, stretched himself, twirled his thin black mustachios, and chuckled in luxurious content.
"Decidedly," said he, "your lordship is past master in the art of wooing; no university in the world would refuse you a degree." ”

“ I forbid you before all-seeing Heaven to wed your niece to a man she does not love! And I have the honor to request of you her hand in marriage."
"Which offer I decline," said Sieur Raymond, grinning placidly,—"with every imaginable civility. Niece," he continued, "here is a gentleman who offers you a heartful of love, six months of insanity, and forty years of boredom in a leaky, wind-swept château. He has dreamed dreams concerning you: allow me to present to you the reality."
With some ceremony Sieur Raymond now grasped Matthiette's hand and led her mirror-ward. ”

“ But while his lips jested of his imprisonment, his eyes stared at her mirthlessly, like a dog at his master, and her gaze fell before the candor of the passion she saw in them.
"My lord," said Adelais, "why will you not give your parole? Then you would be free to come and go as you elected." A little she bent toward him, a covert red showing in her cheeks. "To-night at Halvergate the Earl of Brudenel holds the feast of Saint Michael. Give your parole, my lord, and come with us. There will be in our company fair ladies who may perhaps heal your malady."
But the Sieur d'Arnaye only laughed. ”

“ As I ended, the casement was pushed open, and the Lady Adeliza came upon the balcony, the light streaming from behind her in such fashion as made her appear an angel peering out of Heaven at our mortal antics. Indeed, there was always something more than human in her loveliness, though, to be frank, it savored less of chilling paradisial perfection than of a vision of some great-eyed queen of faery, such as those whose feet glide unwetted over our fen-waters when they roam o' nights in search of unwary travellers. Lady Adeliza was a fair beauty ”

“ Still, I am puzzled by human greatness. A century hence what will he matter, this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties, and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the subject of a drama? ”

“ They are young and they are together. Poor children!" said Dame Melicent. "Youth cries to youth for the toys of youth, and saying, 'Lo, I cry with the voice of a great god!'"
"Still," said Madame Adelaide, "Puysange is a good fief—"
But Florian heeded neither of them as he stood there by the sunlit stream, in which no drop of water retained its place for a moment, and which yet did not alter in appearance at all. He did not heed his elders for the excellent reason that Sylvie de Nointel was about to speak, and he preferred to listen to her. ”

“ The fool sighs for a fair woman,—what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,—even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's? ”

“ Reinault stared in his face for a while. "You are a fool, Adhelmar," said he, at last, "but you are a brave man, and you love as becomes a chevalier. It is a great pity that a flibbertigibbet wench with a tow-head should be the death of you. For my part, I am the King's vassal; I shall not break faith with him; but you are my guest and my kinsman. ”

“ Mélite whispered, and drew near to him. Adhelmar smiled, a little wistfully, for he did not believe that she spoke the truth; but it was good to feel her body close to his, even though he was dying, and he was content.
But by this time the dawn had come completely, flooding the room with its first thin radiance, and Mélite saw the pallor of his face and so knew that he was wounded.
"Indeed, yes," said Adhelmar, when she had questioned him, "for my breast is quite cloven through." ”

“ The Sieur d'Arnaye snorted. "Her mother all over again!" he complained; and then, recovering himself, shook his head with a hint of sadness.
He said: "I have sighed to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is—moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you in, at all events, this matter, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. ”