“Ailas! how little do I know of love!—I, who was once deluded by the conceit that I was all-wise in love. For I am unable to put aside desire for a woman whom I must always love in vain. She has bereft me of hope. She has robbed me of my heart, of herself, and of all joy in the world, and she has left me nothing save dreams and regrets. “Never have I been able to recover my full senses since that moment when she first permitted me to see myself mirrored in her bright eyes. Hey, fatal mirrors! which flattered me too much! for I have sighed ever since I beheld my image in you. I have lost myself in you, like Narcissus in his fountain.” Thus he lamented, standing alone among the turrets of Storisende. Now a troop of jongleurs was approaching the castle—gay dolls, jerked by invisible wires, the vagabonds seemed to be, from this height. “More merry-makers for the marriage-feast. We must spare no appropriate ceremony. And yonder Count Emmerick is ordering the major-domo to prepare peacocks stuffed with beccaficoes, and a pastry builded like a palace. Hah, my beautiful fantastic little people, that I love and play with, and dispose of just as I please, it is time your master shift another puppet.” So Horvendile descended, still poetizing: “_Pus ab mi dons no m pot valer_”—or in other wording: “Since nothing will avail to move my lady—not prayers or righteous claims or mercy—and she desires my homage now no longer, I shall have nothing more to say of love. I must renounce love, and abjure it utterly. I must regard her whom I love as one no longer living. I must, in fine, do that which I prepare to do; and afterward I must depart into eternal exile.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III Of the Double-Dealer’s Traffic With a Knave HORVENDILE left the fortress, and came presently to Maugis d’Aigremont. Horvendile got speech with this brigand where he waited encamped in the hill-country of Perdigon, loth to leave Storisende since it held Ettarre whom he so much desired, but with too few adherents to venture an attack. Maugis sprawled listless in his chair, wrapped in a mantle of soiled and faded green stuff, as though he were cold. In his hand was a naked sword, with which moodily he was prodding the torn papers scattered about him. He did not move at all, but his somber eyes lifted. “What do you plan now, Horvendile?” “Treachery, messire.” “It is the only weapon of you scribblers. How will it serve me?” Then Horvendile spoke. Maugis sat listening. Above the swordhilt the thumb of one hand was stroking the knuckles of the other carefully. His lean and sallow face stayed changeless. Says Maugis: “It is a bold stroke—yes. But how do I know it is not some trap for me?” Horvendile shrugged, and asked: “Have I not served you constantly in the past, messire?”