KING.  To something else! 
             The day has started wrong.  I hoped to show
             You houses, meadows, in the English taste,
             Through which we tried to make this garden please;
             We missed our aim.  Dissemble not, O love! 
             ’Tis so, and let us think of it no more. 
             To duty we devote what time remains,
             Ere Spanish wine spice high our Spanish fare. 
             What, from the boundary still no messenger? 
             Toledo did we choose, with wise intent,
             To be at hand for tidings of the foe. 
             And still there are none?

MANRIQUE.  Sire—­

KING.  What is it, pray?

MANRIQUE.  A messenger—­

KING.  Has come?  What then?

MANRIQUE (pointing to the Queen).

Not now.

KING.  My wife is used to council and to war,
             The Queen in everything shares with the King.

MANRIQUE.  The messenger himself, perhaps, more than
             The message—­

KING.  Well, who is’t?

MANRIQUE.  It is my son.

KING.  Ah, Garceran!  Pray let him come.

(To the QUEEN.)

Stay thou! 
The youth, indeed, most grossly erred, when he
Disguised, slipped in the kemenate to spy
Upon the darling of his heart—­Do not,
O Dona Clara, bow your head in shame,
The man is brave, although both young and rash,
My comrade from my early boyhood days;
And now implacability were worse
Than frivolous condoning of the fault. 
And penance, too, methinks, he’s done enough
For months an exile on our kingdom’s bounds.

[At a nod from the QUEEN, one of the ladies of her suite withdraws.]

And yet she goes:  O Modesty
More chaste than chastity itself!

Enter GARCERAN.

My friend,
What of the border?  Are they all out there
So shy with maiden-modesty as you? 
Then poorly guarded is our realm indeed!

GARCERAN.  A doughty soldier, Sire, ne’er fears a foe,
             But noble women’s righteous wrath is hard.

KING.  ’Tis true of righteous wrath!  And do not think
             That I with custom and propriety
             Am less severe and serious than my wife,
             Yet anger has its limits, like all else. 
             And so, once more, my Garceran, what cheer? 
             Gives you the foe concern in spite of peace?

GARCERAN.  With bloody wounds, O Sire, as if in play,
             On this side of the boundary and that
             We fought, yet ever peace resembled war
             So to a hair, that perfidy alone
             Made all the difference.  But now the foe
             A short time holdeth peace.