The measure was over. The duke and the princess returned to the dais. The jongleurs played loudly. The candles burned, the flung perfumes floated through the hall. The music hid the whispers. Gaucelm the Fortunate sat with a slight smile, his chin upon his hand. For an interlude there was brought upon the floor the jongleur who had made part of the forenoon’s entertainment. Elias of Montaudon he called himself, and he was skilful beyond the ordinary with balls of coloured glass and Eastern platters and daggers. The ugly princess wished the taste of that dance taken from her lips. She watched the jongleur, and because he was all in brown and yellow like an autumn leaf and was as light as one and as quick as a woodland creature, he brought the country to her mind and made her see forests and streams. Her mother had been a mountain lady, and she herself would have liked to rove the earth. She sat still, her gaze straight before her, seeing the coloured balls, but beyond them imagined lands and wanderings. The duke spoke across to the prince her father, and the words came clean and clear to her hearing, and to that of Stephen the Marshal and others standing near. “I have had letters, sir,” said the duke, “which make me to think that I am required at home.” CHAPTER VIII TOURNAMENT THE next morning they heard mass in the castle chapel. The hour was early, the world all drenched with autumn dews. The prince and the duke and Alazais the Fair and Audiart, and behind them many knights and ladies, kneeled on the stone flooring between the sparks of the altar-lamps and the pink morning light. The chanted Latin rose and fell, the bell rang, all bent. In came a lance of sunlight and the vagrant morning breeze. Mass over, all flowed into the paved court. For to-day there was arranged in the duke’s honour, a splendid tourney. Many a good knight would joust—the duke also, it was said. Two hours, and the trumpets would sound. The court was glad when the great folk turned away with their immediate people, and the rest of the world could begin to prepare. Prince Gaucelm did not tilt. When he was young he had proved himself _preux chevalier_. Now he was not so young, and his body weighed heavy, and all his striving was to be _prud’homme_. When he came to his chamber in the great donjon he dismissed from it all save a chamberlain and a page, and the latter he sent to the princess his daughter with a message that she might come to him now as she had asked. In as few minutes as might be she came. There was a window looking to the east, over the castle wall and moat and forth upon the roofs of the town. The prince had here a great chair and a bench with cushions, and the princess was to sit upon the bench. Instead she came and stood beside him, and then slipped to her knees and rested her head against the arm of the chair. “My good father,” she said, “my wise father, my dear father, do you love me?”