Thyrsis went about quite drunk with the burning words with which the minstrel won the lady, and tore her free from the mockeries of convention, and that divinity that doth hedge about a princess. He bore her away, locked tightly in his arms, and all his own--into the great lonely mountains; and there lived the minstrel and the princess, the lord and the lady of an outlaw band. But the outlaws were cruel, and the minstrel sought goodness; and so there was a struggle, and he and the lady went yet deeper into the black forest, where they dwelt alone in a hut, he a prince of hunters and she a princess of love. But the outlaws led the despot to the place, and there was a battle; the princess was slain, and the minstrel escaped in the darkness. All night he roamed the forest, and in the morning he lay by the roadside with a bow in his hand, and when the despot rode by he rose and drove the shaft through his heart. Then they captured him, and tortured him, and he died with a song of mockery and defiance upon his lips. Section 16. Now, when these things first came to Thyrsis, he whispered in awe that it would be a life-time before he could write them. And a year passed thus, while every emotion of his life poured itself into some part of that story, and every note of music that he heard came out of the minstrel’s heart. At last the time came when he was so full of it that he could no longer find peace; when the wonder of it was such that he walked along the street laughing, and with tears in his eyes. Then he said to himself, “It must be done! Now! Now!” And he looked about him as a woman might, seeking some place for her labor. That was in the late winter, when the professors at the university, and all his relatives and acquaintances, had given him up as a hopeless case. He had stopped all his writing for money--he had a hundred dollars laid by, and that would suffice him; and he was wandering about whispering to himself: “The spring-time! The spring-time! For it must be in the country!” When April had come he could stand it no longer--he must go! So he left all behind him, and set out for a place in the wilderness.