“Listen, my Prince,” the boy said:  “here is one view of the affair.”  And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting.

Sang Miguel: 

“Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and Guenevere is a skull.  Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his broom.  Multitudinously we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.

“Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked.  ’Vanity of Vanities!’ saith the beloved.  But she whom I love seems very far away to-night, though I might be with her if I would.  And she may not aid me now, for not even love is all-powerful.  She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.

“At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood.  For the sake of my beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost.  Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army!  A little while and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden path.

“She is very far from me to-night.  Yonder in the Hoerselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden path”

Followed a silence.  “Ignorance spoke there,” the Prince said.  “It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young.  Give me the lute, my little Miguel.”  And presently the Prince, too, sang.

Sang the Prince: 

“I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the land’s Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names.  And one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding fruit-trees.  He debated the significance of these things, and he went astray to gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path.”

“He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a world profuse in beauty.  And he leaped a stile to share his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden