Miguel de Rueda shuddered.  But, “She has her right to happiness,” the page stubbornly said.

“She has only one right,” the Prince retorted; “because it has pleased the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons.  Therefore the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more an inconsiderable matter.  For, as I have read in the Annals of the Romans—­” He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions.  “My little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for protection to five soldiers—­that is, to the five senses,—­to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the flesh.  But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this world—­”

“You whine like a canting friar,” the page complained; “and I can assure you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gatinais.  Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gatinais.  And what am I to deduce from this?”

The Prince reflected.  At last he said:  “I have also read in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound with vermin.  My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm—­that is, no virtue.  But once they are struck with lightning—­that is, by the grace of God,—­they are astonishingly fruitful in good works.”

The page began to laugh.  “You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though you will never know it,—­and I hate you a little,—­and I envy you a great deal.”

“Ah, but,” Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never quick-witted,—­“but it is not for my own happiness that I ride southward.”

The page then said, “What is her name?”

Prince Edward answered, very fondly, “Hawise.”

“I hate her, too,” said Miguel de Rueda; “and I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy her.”

In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other fled.

Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn.  Miguel had procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves.