But the griefs of the powerful and the fortunate are often mingled with impatience of interrupted prosperity. "What means this?" he demanded sternly of the leech. "I sent you this morning to attend my nephew on the first tidings of his illness, and commanded that he should make no attempt to be present on this day's solemnity, yet I find him in this state, and in this place." "So please your lordship," replied the leech, with a conscious self-importance, which even the presence of the Constable could not subdue--_"Curatio est canonica, non coacta;_ which signifieth, my lord, that the physician acteth his cure by rules of art and science--by advice and prescription, but not by force or violence upon the patient, who cannot be at all benefited unless he be voluntarily amenable to the orders of his medicum." "Tell me not of your jargon," said De Lacy; "if my nephew was lightheaded enough to attempt to come hither in the heat of a delirious distemper, you should have had sense to prevent him, had it been by actual force." "It may be," said, Randal de Lacy, joining the crowd, who, forgetting the cause which had brought them together, were now assembled about Damian, "that more powerful was the magnet which drew our kinsman hither, than aught the leech could do to withhold him." The Constable, still busied about his nephew, looked up as Randal spoke, and, when he was done, asked, with formal coldness of manner, "Ha, fair kinsman, of what magnet do you speak?" "Surely of your nephew's love and regard to your lordship," answered Randal, "which, not to mention his respect for the lady Eveline, must have compelled him hither, if his limbs were able to bear him.--And here the bride comes, I think, in charity, to thank him for his zeal." "What unhappy case is this?" said the Lady Eveline, pressing forward, much disordered with the intelligence of Damian's danger, which had been suddenly conveyed to her. "Is there nothing in which my poor service may avail?" "Nothing, lady," said the Constable, rising from beside his nephew, and taking her hand; "your kindness is here mistimed. This motley assembly, this unseeming confusion, become not your presence." "Unless it could be helpful, my lord," said Eveline, eagerly. "It is your nephew who is in danger--my deliverer--one of my deliverers, I would say." "He is fitly attended by his chirurgeon," said the Constable, leading back his reluctant bride to the convent, while the medical attendant triumphantly exclaimed, "Well judgeth my Lord Constable, to withdraw his noble Lady from the host of petticoated empirics, who, like so many Amazons, break in upon and derange the regular course of physical practice, with their petulant prognostics, their rash recipes, their mithridate, their febrifuges, their amulets, and their charms. Well speaketh the Ethnic poet, 'Non audet, nisi qua didicit, dare quod medicorum est; Promittunt medici--tractant fabrilia fabri,'"