There were four chairs of state, though not set arow. Only two were occupied—that in which sat ivory-and-gold Alazais, and that in which sat the duke who had come to view Prince Gaucelm’s daughter. The duke sat over against Alazais, with a strip of green grass between. He was not beautiful: he had a shrunk form and a narrow, weazened face. But he stared at the beauty before him, and a slight shiver went through him with a fine prickling. “Madonna!” he thought. “If the other were his wife, and this his daughter!” Ugo came to the green level. Alazais rose to greet him and the duke followed her. He had informed himself in the politics of Roche-de-Frêne: he knew that though now there was peace between prince and bishop, it had not always been so and might not be so again. The duke was no great statesman, but to every one, at the moment, he was as smooth as an innate, cross-grained imperiousness would let him be. A fair seat was found for my lord bishop, the two canons and the secretary standing behind him. “Ah, my lord,” said Alazais, “you are good to grace our idle time! Our poets have sung and will sing again, and then myself and all these ladies are pledged to judge of a great matter. Sir Gilles de Valence, what is the matter?” The troubadour addressed bent the knee. “Princess, the history of Madame Dido, and if she were not the supremest servant of Love who would not survive, not the death but the leave-taking of her knight, Messire Æneas, but made a pyre and burned herself thereon! And of her example, as lover, to fair ladies, and if they should not, emulating her,—in a manner of figure and not, most fair, with actual flames!—withdraw themselves, as it were, from being and existence throughout the time that flows between the leave-taking and coming again of their knights. And of Messire Æneas, and if Love truly had him in bonds.” “Truly, a fair matter!” said Ugo, with hidden scorn. “Here are the prince and the Princess Audiart!” Dais and garden broke off their talk, turned with a flash of colour and a bending movement toward the lord of the land.