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Katharine punctuated the harper's discourse with eager questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he had heard, when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was sufficiently jovial, and even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was.

Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me about yourself."

He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the kings of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the holy man had never accredited a vicar.

"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable." Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as if in reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting reading than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; if she chose to read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough.

I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before Katharine hinted at departure.

Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days past at Chteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?"

Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither--"

"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Chteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Lonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,--

"El tems amoreus plein de joie, El tems o tote riens s'esgaie,--"

and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings.

Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.

Sang Alain:

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Be not too obdurate to us who pray That this our transient grant of youth be spent In laughter as befits a holiday, From which the evening summons us away, From which to-morrow wakens us to strife And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day Grudge us not life!

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Why need our elders trouble us at play? We know that very soon we shall repent The idle follies of our holiday, And being old, shall be as wise as they: But now we are not wise, and lute and fife Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day Grudge us not life!

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, You have given us youth--and must we cast away The cup undrained and our one coin unspent Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray? They have forgotten that if we delay Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- 'Grudge us not life!'

"Madam, recall that in the sun we play But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, The tomb for habitation--and to-day Grudge us not life!"

Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.

"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You came!"

She breathed, "Yes."

So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror.

It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I have to split the world like a rotten orange."

"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a minstrel and I am a king's daughter."

"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore; "the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again."

"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a silver coin.

And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Htel de Saint-Pol matters were much the same. Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed. But King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her to be the wife of Presbyter John, the tyrant of Aethiopia. However, ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for King Charles' amusement, and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at this new game.

So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how gross are the exaggerations of rumor.

In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine.

"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and breathed heavily. "Never was any poor woman so pestered as I! The puddings to-day were quite uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed on a sudden; "you are bruising me."

Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. "The King of England--a tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his neck--here--and with his left cheek scarred? with blue eyes, very bright, bright as tapers?" She poured out her questions in a torrent, and awaited the answer, seeming not to breathe at all.

"I believe so," the Queen said, "and they say, too, that he has the damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer."

"O God!" said Katharine.

"Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy than has this misbegotten English butcher shown us!" the good lady desired, with fervor. "The hog, having won our Normandy, is now advancing on Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish alliance last August; and until last August he was content with Normandy, they tell us, but now he swears to win all France. The man is a madman, and Scythian Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not believe that in all France there is a cook who understands his business." She went away whimpering, and proceeded to get tipsy.

The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; you may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the girl spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August! _Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come to you again_. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began to pray.

In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I have thought him less than a king!"

You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like card-houses. Every rumor of defeat--and the news of some fresh defeat came daily--was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot, outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and Pisidic and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for Judith's nobler guilt.

In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. Katharine raised her eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but it was he, a young Zeus now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet in place of a plume he wore a fox-brush spangled with jewels.

These six entered the tent pitched for the conference--the hanging of blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold blurred before the girl's eyes,--and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable, and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his eyes glowing.

"I have come," he said, under cover of Warwick's oratory--"I have come again, my lady."

Katharine's gaze flickered over him. "Liar!" she said, very softly. "Has God no thunders remaining in His armory that this vile thief still goes unblasted? Would you steal love as well as kingdoms?"

His ruddy face was now white. "I love you, Katharine."

"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe, messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder."

Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day. The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept, shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid, frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois, insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently vaulted to a towering fury.

"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom."

The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired."

At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage.

It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable.

Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France, and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting.

This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his apartments at the Htel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the courtyard.

Sang the voice:

"I can find no meaning in life, That have weighed the world,--and it was Abundant with folly, and rife With sorrows brittle as glass, And with joys that flicker and pass Like dreams through a fevered head; And like the dripping of rain In gardens naked and dead Is the obdurate thin refrain Of our youth which is presently dead.

"And she whom alone I have loved Looks ever with loathing on me, As one she hath seen disproved And stained with such smirches as be Not ever cleansed utterly; And is both to remember the days When Destiny fixed her name As the theme and the goal of my praise; And my love engenders shame, And I stain what I strive for and praise.

"O love, most perfect of all, Just to have known you is well! And it heartens me now to recall That just to have known you is well, And naught else is desirable Save only to do as you willed And to love you my whole life long;-- But this heart in me is filled With hunger cruel and strong, And with hunger unfulfilled.

"Fond heart, though thy hunger be As a flame that wanders unstilled, There is none more perfect than she!"

Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush before the Princess.

Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table. "So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping the brush against the table.

"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would have won."

"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father--all pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared in the doorway.

"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to pluck at his dribbling lips.

Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday were lords of France."

"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my mind is somewhat prempted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of policy--ey, my compre of England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence of the moon drew it hither."

Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly:

"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again, son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies-- very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child.

"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear."

"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the corridor began to sing:

"A hundred thousand times good-bye! I go to seek the Evangelist, For here all persons cheat and lie ..."

All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?"

"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender cadences--"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,--Alain who has loved you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before you entreating grace."

Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally.

"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase, peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters meet."

"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. "But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; now in Troyes they meet again,--not as princess and king, but as man and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think. And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the harper." His hand closed upon her hand.

At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land, since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which shrieks your infamy?"

He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me."

She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him, but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no sight more desirable."

"You loved Alain."

"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I loved him."

"You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this notion of yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is indisputable, and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the window--" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead man. Strike, then! For with me dies the English power in France. Strike, Katharine! If you see in me but the King of England."

She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of terror.

"You came alone! You dared!"

He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! How else might I conquer you?"

"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, poising it. God had granted her prayer--to save France. Now the past and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's nobler guilt. But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand murder you."

But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike upon the gong."

"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture.

"Yes, I am cruel."

Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God. As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong.

If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter.

A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain--" said Katharine, and then again, "Germain--" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp. Messire Alain here is about to play for me."

At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my prayer, and you have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for there remains only your love."

He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said.

She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did not matter now.

"Love is enough," she told her master docilely.

Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter of remark among the busybodies of both armies.

THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL

THE EPILOGUE

"Et je fais savoir tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistrs icy, afin que vous pouviez les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist."

HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE.

_The Epilogue_

_A Son Livret_

Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you not to grieve at what cannot be avoided.

But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate, and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae restat nisi nomen Athenae?_

Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.

I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history. Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and entitled _The Red Cuckold_, which composes the final portion of this history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this blood.

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric. Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned cavillers should rightfully complain.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song runs in this fashion:

Depart, depart, my book! and live and die Dependent on the idle fantasy Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.

For I am fond, and willingly mistake My book to be the book I meant to make, And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake.

Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill In making you, that never spared the will To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.

Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I Had wrought in you some wizardry so high That no man but had listened ...

They pass by, And shrug--as we, who know that unto us It has been granted never to fare thus, And never to be strong and glorious.

Is it denied me to perpetuate What so much loving labor did create?-- I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.

For I have got such recompense Of that high-hearted excellence Which the contented craftsman knows, Alone, that to loved labor goes, And daily does the work he chose, And counts all else impertinence!

EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM