The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him sing again. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “How comes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?” “I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaining himself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count might hear me—” “He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur, and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth the troubadour. “I would take you into my employ, but though I can pay linnets, I cannot pay nightingales!—Do you know any song of Robert de Mercœur?” He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and swept the strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and did sweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gave applause, and Robert de Mercœur sighed with pleasure. The song was short. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour. “Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!” He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of right interpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, _If e’er, Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee_?” Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercœur; “there is the poet I would have fellowship with!” The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Count of Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had been seated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence of deference fell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had a look of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding, and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretched himself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he had acquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.” “Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel of sound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set him to singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.” Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. He stood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!” said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in your cradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin came very near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangs upon my speaking to you alone.” A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. The Count moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’s face. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the other in a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in his chair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his original station. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place among his fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”