The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.

‘I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!’ and he stamped resolve with his staff.

Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.

‘How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of life!’ he said.

Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with his comrade’s aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and redescended.

‘There,’ he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, ’that chases him out of the nostril sooner than aught else, the breath of a fresh lass-like flower!  I was tormented till now by the reek of the damned rising from under me.  This is heaven’s own incense, I think!’

And Guy inhaled the flowers and spake prettily to them.

‘They have a melancholy sweetness, friend,’ said Farina.  ’I think of whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me.  Do not you?’

‘Nay, nor hope to till my wits are clean gone,’ was the Goshawk’s reply.  ’To my mind, ’tis an honest flower, and could I do good service by the young maiden who there set it, I should be rendering back good service done; for if that flower has not battled the devil in my nose this night, and beaten him, my head’s a medlar!’

’I scarce know whether as a devout Christian I should listen to that, friend,’ Farina mildly remonstrated.  ’Lilies are indeed emblems of the saints; but then they are not poor flowers of earth, being transfigured, lustrous unfadingly.  Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells!  I look on the white sea of the saints.  I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom.  All beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy everlasting.  Colourless peace!  Oh, my beloved!  So walkest thou for my soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy spotless virgin linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy cheek to it, where the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red, the espousals of heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a wreath of sapphire stars, and the solitude of purity around!’

‘Ah!’ sighed the Goshawk, dandling his flower-pot; ’the moon gives strokes as well’s the sun.  I’ faith, moon-struck and maid-struck in one!  He’ll be asking for his head soon.  This dash of the monk and the minstrel is a sure sign.  That ’s their way of loving in this land:  they all go mad, straight off.  I never heard such talk.’

Guy accompanied these remarks with a pitiful glance at his companion.

’Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we’ve borrowed to its rightful owner.  ’S blood! but I feel an appetite.  This night-air takes me in the wind like a battering ram.  I thought I had laid in a stout four-and-twenty hours’ stock of Westphalian Wurst at Master Groschen’s supper-table.  Good stuff, washed down with superior Rhine wine; say your Liebfrauenmilch for my taste; though, when I first tried it, I grimaced like a Merry-Andrew, and remembered roast beef and Glo’ster ale in my prayers.’