When the falcon beheld the light and turned to look around, it gathered its strength for flight, expecting to be swung on the arm of the bearer, while its glances rapidly sought its prey in the air; these glances were sharp and fierce with hunger, flaming as with sparks, and they had no memory in their depths, they recognized no one. But Renaud’s eyes were fixed in anxious searching on those of the bird and were filled with tears of sorrow at not meeting them. They should have mirrored his life’s bold longing, his contempt, and his dreams on the red heather, but they only waited greedily for their prey, grimly and coldly as the human spirit of curiosity or jesting on the thin lips of Sir Enguerrand. He felt his sorrow smart more bitterly than before and turned aside his head to recover himself, his eyelids closed and his thoughts fluttering. He lay thus while the herald proclaimed the law--“twelve sols of silver--six ounces of flesh over the heart--thus does Sir Enguerrand safeguard the pastime of the nobles.” He did not look up when his skin was cut so that the scent of blood should attract the falcon, and when it sank its beak in his breast he gave no cry, merely trembled, so that the bird’s eyes flamed up in rage and its wings were spread out as if to beat. The seneschal’s daughters leaned their heads forward with a gleam of interest in their strange dreaming eyes, but they did not raise their hands from their laps, and their garments lay as before in tranquil folds. The horses snorted at the smell of blood and stamped on the frosty ground so that the red horsecloths flapped against the pallor of the deepening blue, but Renaud lay silent, and the huntsmen stood needlessly with expanded cheeks and horns to their mouths ready to drown his cries. The first agony had clutched at his finest fibres, it seemed as if his heart would come out with them; but afterwards he had grown numb almost to the degree of pleasure, and while the blood flowed warmly from the wound, and the pointed beak tore at his breast, Renaud dreamed himself into the high blue heaven of his visions, until he understood everything, death and honor, feeling how it burned and dazzled--the yellow sunlight of heroic story. When Sir Enguerrand thought that the legal six ounces had been paid, he gave his men a sign to blow, and the falcon was lifted off, sated with blood, its eyes filled once more with tranquil pride, and the troop set itself in motion more gaily even than before toward the sedge that gleamed yellow in the distance. But Renaud could not be wakened, he had dreamed himself to death, and they merely loosed him and let him lie with the red heather under his head. The Iceland falcon, however, might never sit on its master’s hand, for Sir Enguerrand did not care to drink of a cup where another’s lips had pressed a kiss. OUT OF THE DARK