As our mistress spoke these words, she placed her small white hand on my sleeve that was near to her, and it was like that of a small child that is fit only to grasp a toy. Yet when I felt the hot flame of passion that was burning in it, and its gentle trembling that was like the autumn willow, the hot blood of my youth surmounted me, and had I dared--and yet, reader, I must declare to you that I dared not--I would have paid half the course of nature to enfold this regal form to my breast. I was waked from the trance of my desire by a profound sigh. It was of a melodious yet half mirthful bitterness. Without turning about I knew it to proceed from the Count of Nullepart. Yet, such was its delicacy that it lured me to turn my eyes to meet his own. And as they came together, we found within the gaze of one another the high yearning of our souls an hundred times reflected. “Ah, my dear friend,” he lisped in the gentle and charming melody of his speech, which yet could not still the tumult of my soul, “have you forgot the Princess, she whom we serve yet see not, she whom we clasp yet cannot retain?” “I curse that English robber!” I hissed in his ears. “I ask you, Sir Count, why does not the devil claim his own?” “The better to plague an honest community, my dear friend,” said the Count of Nullepart, with a soft laugh. “Yet, on his part, this gigantic and monstrous Maximus Homo is a profligate, happy and careless son of the earth, who forever disdains the caresses that our Princess Fortune casts upon him. To her he is the prince who mocks her with the valiant insolency of his prodigal nature.” And, as if to show that the worshipful Count of Nullepart had truly rendered his philosophy, at this moment a high yearning cry, like that of a soul in durance, was proclaimed in our ears. And we saw a crystal tear within each of the orbs of our mistress, within each of those orbs that were wont to look proud at the sun. CHAPTER XXXVI OF SOLPESIUS MUS, THE CAPTAIN-GENERAL OF THE JOGALONES MADAM sat in council to receive Sir Richard Pendragon, her valiant captain. The afternoon sky burst through the western windows of the great chamber in the glory of crimson and gold. It clothed in the frank nobility of heaven the form of our mistress, seated in her jewels and in her robes of state upon the daïs, with none near to her save his lordship’s grace, who slept lustily. When the doors were flung back her eyes sparkled like the beautiful Tagus when its fair face is all dimpled in smiling to the princely sun, and her proud lips were wide-parted as with the entranced speech of the heart’s poetry. A fanfare was sounded upon trumpets; and then Sir Richard Pendragon, leading nine captive noblemen, some with silver hairs, with their hands bound and halters about their necks, came into the presence of his mistress.