Gaucelm the Fortunate watched from his dais and his great chair, where he sat with bent elbow and his chin resting upon his hand. Sitting so, he opened his other hand and looked again at a small piece of cotton paper that had been slipped within it. Upon the paper appeared, in the up-and-down, architectural writing of the period, these words: “Messire, my father; do not, of your good pity, make me wed this lord! I will be unhappy. You will be unhappy. He will be unhappy. I do think that our lands and his lands will be unhappy. Messire my father, I do not wish to wed.” Prince Gaucelm closed his hand and watched again. The duke was dancing stiffly, with a bad grace masked as well as he could mask anything that he truly felt. He wished to be prudent, and certainly it were not prudent to give to Roche-de-Frêne either open or secret offence. Not yet, even, had he determined.—He yet might, and he might not.—But he was an arrogant man and a vain, and to his own mind it was important that the world should not think he was fooled. Lasting love between lord and lady, duke and duchess, mattered, forsooth, little enough! It was not in the bond. When it came to beauty, he had seen great queens without beauty of face or form. But the duke, though he had it not himself, demanded that beauty in any woman immediately about him, and with it complaisance, bent head, and burning of incense. And he wished men to envy him, in some sort, all his goods, including the woman whom he would make duchess. That was where Gaucelm was fortunate. What living man, thought the duke, but would like to take from him golden Alazais? He danced as starkly as though he were in hauberk and helmet, and his hand might have been mailed, so stiffly did it touch Audiart’s hand. Who would envy him this Egyptian? He never noted if she danced well or ill, if she had some grace of body or no; he looked for no expression in her face that he might admire. She was outlandish—ugly. There was—as would have become such a changeling—no awe of him, no tremulous fear lest she should not please. He had an injured, hot heart within him. Report had been too careless, bringing him only news that here was a marriageable princess. He blamed his councillors, determined to withdraw his favour from one who had been called his bosom friend, but who had advocated this match. He blamed Gaucelm, who, to his elaborate letter, had answered only with an invitation to visit Roche-de-Frêne. He should have said: “Fair lord, you do my daughter too much honour, who, you must know—” But chiefly the duke blamed that princess herself.