Adeline blushed slightly and sighed; and then, to break the awkwardness of a pause which had stolen over them, as Montreal, unheeding the last remark of Adrian, was tuning the strings of the lute, she said—­“Of course the Signor di Castello shares the universal enthusiasm for Petrarch?”

“Ay,” cried Montreal; “my lady is Petrarch mad, like the rest of them:  but all I know is, that never did belted knight and honest lover woo in such fantastic and tortured strains.”

“In Italy,” answered Adrian, “common language is exaggeration;—­but even your own Troubadour poetry might tell you that love, ever seeking a new language of its own, cannot but often run into what to all but lovers seems distortion and conceit.”

“Come, dear Signor,” said Montreal, placing the lute in Adrian’s hands, “let Adeline be the umpire between us, which music—­yours or mine—­can woo the more blandly.”

“Ah,” said Adrian, laughing; “I fear me, Sir Knight, you have already bribed the umpire.”

Montreal’s eyes and Adeline’s met; and in that gaze Adeline forgot all her sorrows.

With a practised and skilful hand, Adrian touched the strings; and selecting a song which was less elaborate than those mostly in vogue amongst his countrymen, though still conceived in the Italian spirit, and in accordance with the sentiment he had previously expressed to Adeline, he sang as follows:—­

Love’s Excuse for Sadness.

Chide not, beloved, if oft with thee I feel not rapture wholly; For aye the heart that’s fill’d with love, Runs o’er in melancholy.  To streams that glide in noon, the shade From summer skies is given; So, if my breast reflects the cloud, ’Tis but the cloud of heaven!  Thine image glass’d within my soul So well the mirror keepeth; That, chide me not, if with the light The shadow also sleepeth.

“And now,” said Adrian, as he concluded, “the lute is to you:  I but preclude your prize.”

The Provencal laughed, and shook his head.—­“With any other umpire, I had had my lute broken on my own head, for my conceit in provoking such a rival; but I must not shrink from a contest I have myself provoked, even though in one day twice defeated.”  And with that, in a deep and exquisitely melodious voice, which wanted only more scientific culture to have challenged any competition, the Knight of St. John poured forth: 

The Lay of the Troubadour.

     1.

     Gentle river, the moonbeam is hush’d on thy tide,
     On thy pathway of light to my lady I glide. 
     My boat, where the stream laves the castle, I moor,—­
     All at rest save the maid and her young Troubadour! 
     As the stars to the waters that bore
     My bark, to my spirit thou art;
     Heaving yet, see it bound to the shore,
     So moor’d to thy beauty my heart,—­
     Bel’ amie, bel’ amie, bel’ amie!

     2.