“Let the enchantress look to that,” answered Sir Folko; “but if the place you have now chosen be that of a prisoner, then let others boast of their freedom. I for one would rather be the captive.” Hereupon he also took his place on the ground beside Gabrielle; and Blanchefleur sang to her guitarre a sportive ballad, in which she likened her beautiful hostess to a fairy queen; and the two warriors beside her to a lion and an eagle, between whom she was to decide who should wear the palm of victory. Blanchefleur was but in jest, and thought of her music only, not of the words that she had sung; yet what she had said failed not to make a deep impression on her hearers. The lion and the eagle looked up anxiously, and with watchful eyes for the judgment to be pronounced on them; while the fairy queen (as she had been named by Blanchefleur) sat between them, blushing and confused, till at last a green branch, which she happened to hold in her right hand, inclined itself, as if drawn by magnetic attraction, towards the head of the Chevalier de Montfaucon. At that moment the Lady Bertha had taken up a guitarre, and for the first time began to join in the music of that evening; but in tones so mournful and unexpected, that she soon put to flight the pleasant dreams with which her companions had entertained themselves. Every one looked on her with as much astonishment as if a statue or a portrait had begun to speak. In her melancholy chaunt, she sang only of her cousin Sir Otto of Trautwangen. “Where,” said she, “is now the young knight, with his black and silver mail, and his light-brown charger? He is, alas! vanished from our sight; his light-brown steed has galloped away, and his good battle-sword is broken.” Thereafter she sang two stanzas, addressed to Gabrielle as the betrothed bride of her cousin Sir Otto, which peradventure the damsel would rather not have heard; but, at length, Sir Folko started up suddenly, so that his armour rang and rattled. In all haste he fastened on his sword and sash, and bade his beautiful hostess farewell. “On my return,” said he, “I shall blow my hunting-horn for a signal, and the Moorish prince will then join me in the neighbouring forest.” Gabrielle did not venture to make any objection, though perchance, had it not been for the dusk of the evening, tears might have been seen both in her eyes and those of Sir Folko. The knight embraced his sister Blanchefleur with melancholy emotion, and whispered softly to Bertha as he passed her bye, “Thanks, noble Lady, for your kind and virtuous counsel!” He would not listen when the Moorish prince, now confounded by his behaviour, inquired why he departed so suddenly, and added thereto, half as it seemed in earnest, half in jest, that he now looked on the conditions of his captivity as being wholly broken. The noble Chevalier de Montfaucon did not stay to answer him, but ran hastily down stairs from the balcony into the court; whence, in a few minutes