A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT by MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens) Part 3. CHAPTER XII SLOW TORTURE Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely andpleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morningin the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fairgreen valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding throughthem, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonelyoaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyondthe valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretchingaway in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervalsa dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew wasa castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no soundof footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of greenlight that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leavesoverhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runletswent frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort ofwhispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left theworld behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and richgloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurriedby and were gone before you could even get your eye on the placewhere the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turningout and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonderand a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms ona tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses ofthe woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare. About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out intothe glare--it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or soafter sun-up--it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It wasbeginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a verylong pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious howprogressively little frets grow and multiply after they once geta start. Things which I didn't mind at all, at first, I beganto mind now--and more and more, too, all the time. The firstten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care;I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and droppedit out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it allthe time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn'tget it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and saidhang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pocketsin it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some otherthings; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take offby yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there;and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularlyconvenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all theworse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't getis the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and itwas bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep tricklingdown into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a littlething, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it wasthe most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of coursethese iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise Sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfortfirst, and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and thenwe struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds andget into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I saidthings I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that. I am notbetter than others. We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, noteven an ogre; and, in the mood I was in then, it was well forthe ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knightswould have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so I gothis bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me. Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and moreall the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every little thingirritates you. When I trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand thatshield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around myback; and if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screechedin that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn'tcreate any breeze at that gait, I was like to get fried in thatstove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the ironsettled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weighevery minute. And you had to be always changing hands, and passingyour spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one handto hold it long at a time. Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comesa time when you--when you--well, when you itch. You are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is oneplace; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading andspreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobodycan imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. Andwhen it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I couldnot stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settledon my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and Icouldn't get the visor up; and I could only shake my head, whichwas baking hot by this time, and the fly--well, you know how a flyacts when he has got a certainty--he only minded the shaking enoughto change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzzall around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a waythat a person, already so distressed as I was, simply could notstand. So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet andrelieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of itand fetched it full of water, and I drank and then stood up, andshe poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think howrefreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I waswell soaked and thoroughly comfortable. It was good to have a rest--and peace. But nothing is quiteperfect in this life, at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but whatsome of the Indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again, but no matches. Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne inupon my understanding--that we were weather-bound. An armed novicecannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy wasnot enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait untilsomebody should come along. Waiting, in silence, would have beenagreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, andwanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think outhow it was that rational or even half-rational men could everhave learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; andhow they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generationswhen it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had hadto suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out;and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this eviland persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; butthinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn'tthink, where Sandy was. She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she hada flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your headsore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a corkshe would have been a comfort. But you can't cork that kind;they would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would thinksomething would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up forwords. She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was justnothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a foghas. She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as shecould be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account ofhaving that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than oncein the afternoon I had to say: "Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it'sa low enough treasury without that. " CHAPTER XIII FREEMEN Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can becontented. Only a little while back, when I was riding andsuffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenityin this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would haveseemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the timeby pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yetalready I was getting dissatisfied; partly because I could notlight my pipe--for, although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches with me--and partly because wehad nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlikeimprovidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trustedto chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalizedat the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. Therewas probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination whowould not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thingas that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything moresensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwichesinto my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to makean excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. Night approached, and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselleunder a rock, and went off and found another for myself. ButI was obliged to remain in my armor, because I could not get it offby myself and yet could not allow Alisande to help, because itwould have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would nothave amounted to that in reality, because I had clothes onunderneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gottenrid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to strippingoff that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed. With the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the windblew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colderit got. Pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and wormsand things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down insidemy armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough, and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majoritywere of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisomeprocession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and area kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again. It would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not rollor thrash around, because this excites the interest of all thedifferent sorts of animals and makes every last one of them wantto turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worsethan they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash aroundhe would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other;there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I couldstill distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he istaking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armorafter this trip. All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a livingfire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, thatsame unanswerable question kept circling and circling through mytired head: How do people stand this miserable armor? How havethey managed to stand it all these generations? How can they sleepat night for dreading the tortures of next day? When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid ofthe animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it faredwith the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle Alisandela Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had sleptlike the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor anyother noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was notmissing it. Measured by modern standards, they were merely modifiedsavages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to getto breakfast--and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeysthose Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them;and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting, after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not, Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping alongbehind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poorcreatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regardedas a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when Iproposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, sooverwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine thatat first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she saidin their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with theother cattle--a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merelybecause it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offendedthem, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenthsof the free population of the country were of just their class anddegree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc. ; which isto say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were aboutall of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation andleave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly withthe arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or valuein any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingeniouscontrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tailof the procession where it belonged, was marching head up andbanners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to bethe Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so longthat they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not onlythat, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priestshad told their fathers and themselves that this ironical stateof things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon howunlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especiallysuch poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matterthere and become respectfully quiet. The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound ina formerly American ear. They were freemen, but they could notleave the estates of their lord or their bishop without hispermission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must havetheir corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of theirown property without paying him a handsome percentage of theproceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without rememberinghim in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for himgratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving theirown crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to lethim plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignationto themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grainaround the trees; they had to smother their anger when his huntingparties galloped through their fields laying waste the result oftheir patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their cropsthey must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful wouldthe penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then camethe procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: firstthe Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissionertook his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroadupon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had libertyto bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble;there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxesagain, and yet other taxes--upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon thewasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church; if the baron wouldsleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day'swork and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman'sdaughter--but no, that last infamy of monarchical government isunprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with histortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, andsacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentleChurch condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried himat midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his propertyand turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to workon their lord the bishop's road three days each--gratis; everyhead of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it waslike reading about France and the French, before the ever memorableand blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of suchvillany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlementof that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood foreach hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out ofthat people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong andshame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror, " if we would but remember itand consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the otherin heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other hadlasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousandpersons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders areall for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared withdeath by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain thecoffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been sodiligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France couldhardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us hasbeen taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfastand their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for theirking and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked themif they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a freevote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and itsdescendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families--including the voter's; andwould also elect that a certain hundred families should be raisedto dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissibleglories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation'sfamilies--_including his own_. They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they hadnever thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to themthat a nation could be so situated that every man _could_ havea say in the government. I said I had seen one--and that it wouldlast until it had an Established Church. Again they were allunhit--at first. But presently one man looked up and asked meto state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it couldsoak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he hadthe idea, and he brought his fist down and said _he_ didn't believea nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get downin the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nationits will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes. I said to myself: "This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I wouldmake a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to provemyself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in itssystem of government. " You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not toits institutions or its office-holders. The country is the realthing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thingto watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions areextraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the bodyfrom winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shoutfor rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyaltyof unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was inventedby monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whoseConstitution declares "that all political power is inherent inthe people, and all free governments are founded on their authorityand instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form ofgovernment_ in such a manner as they may think expedient. " Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that thecommonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds hispeace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he isa traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees thisdecay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, andit is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not seethe matter as he does. And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how thecountry should be governed was restricted to six persons in eachthousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-fourto express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and proposeto change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid blacktreason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporationwhere nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished allthe money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselvesa permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemedto me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed wasa new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus sideof my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get upan insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that theJack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without firsteducating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutelycertain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had beenfor some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite differentpattern from the Cade-Tyler sort. So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who satmunching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of humansheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from hisveins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark-- Put him in the Man-factory-- and gave it to him, and said: "Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands ofAmyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand. " "He is a priest, then, " said the man, and some of the enthusiasmwent out of his face. "How--a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn'tI tell you that _you_ couldn't enter unless your religion, whateverit might be, was your own free property?" "Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there. " "But he isn't a priest, I tell you. " The man looked far from satisfied. He said: "He is not a priest, and yet can read?" "He is not a priest and yet can read--yes, and write, too, for thatmatter. I taught him myself. " The man's face cleared. "And it isthe first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory--" "I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why, I will be your slave, your--" "No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your familyand go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your smallproperty, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right. " CHAPTER XIV "DEFEND THEE, LORD" I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagantprice it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozenpersons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, andI had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then thesepeople had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant astheir provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasizemy appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financiallift where the money would do so much more good than it wouldin my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and notstinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of aburden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got theproportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so longa sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able toabsolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple ofdollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: justtwins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start fromCamelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paidthese people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and thatwould have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adoptedthe American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle ofgold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all throughthe commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see thisnew blood freshen up its life. The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offsetmy liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flintand steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandyand me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smokeshot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people brokefor the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the groundwith a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belchingdragons they had heard so much about from knights and otherprofessional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those peopleto venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them thatthis was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to nonebut my enemies. And I promised, with my hand on my heart, thatif all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and passbefore me they should see that only those who remained behind wouldbe struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness. There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enoughto remain behind to see what would happen. I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworksthat I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out beforethey would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the newthing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up herconversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that wasa gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learnedsomething. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might comealong, now. We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunitycame about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossinga vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupteda remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry: "Defend thee, lord!--peril of life is toward!" And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozenarmed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustleamong them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipewas ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost inthinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restoreto all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliginganybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good headof reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none ofthose chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fairplay. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It wasa handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laidmy lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the ironwave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column ofwhite smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seenthe wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight thanthe other one. But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, andthis troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came;I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was goingto be eloquent--but I stopped her, and told her my magic hadmiscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch, and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that myenchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on, because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddlespresently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could notdeceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a mistake; thatwhen my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the menwould not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus, I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for thosepeople would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said: "Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot willgive battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assailthem again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquerand destroy them; and so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovaleand Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else thatwill venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, but yet desire more?" "Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave?Nobody's hindering. Good land, I'm willing to let bygones bebygones, I'm sure. " "Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dreamnot of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them. " "Come--really, is that 'sooth'--as you people say? If they want to, why don't they?" "It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come. " "Well, then, suppose I go to them instead, and--" "Ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. I will go. " And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. I presentlysaw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That wasa relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings--I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't havebeen so short. But it turned out that she had managed the businesswell; in fact, admirably. She said that when she told those peopleI was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sorewith fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready toput up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appearat Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse andharness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. How much better she managed that thing than I should have doneit myself! She was a daisy. CHAPTER XV SANDY'S TALE "And so I'm proprietor of some knights, " said I, as we rode off. "Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assetsof that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I rafflethem off. How many of them are there, Sandy?" "Seven, please you, sir, and their squires. " "It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?" "Where do they hang out?" "Yes, where do they live?" "Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons. " Then shesaid musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over hertongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do theyhang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth thephrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily wordedwithal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, wherebyI may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so!already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--" "Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy. " "Cowboys?" "Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them. A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called. " "Game--" "Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on yourstatistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your firestarted. Tell me about the knights. " "I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed androde into a great forest. And--" "Great Scott!" You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her worksa-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting downto those facts. And she generally began without a preface andfinished without a result. If you interrupted her she would eithergo right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptionsonly did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt prettyfrequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die ifhe let her monotony drip on him right along all day. "Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back andbegan over again: "So they two departed and rode into a great forest. And--" "_Which_ two?" "Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their massesin the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a greatforest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, oftwelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, andthe damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaineware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as thedamsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire uponthe shield--" "Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see thosecreatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, andI mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblesthello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land. " "Hello-girl?" "Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl;they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them whenthey are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feelingsorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've gotto confess--" "Peradventure she--" "Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explainher so you would understand. " "Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine andSir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did thatdespite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield, and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth allladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite tothe shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evila good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventurethough he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he lovethin some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--" "Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. Youwould have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in frontof your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bringabout a new distribution of the married princesses and duchessesof the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is justa sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squawin it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desertto the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt. " "--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine. Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus theking's son of Ireland. " "Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't meananything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jumpthis gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs inthe circus; he is born before his time. " "I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight asany is on live. " "_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is thatyou are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter. " "--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights weregathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, saidSir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is tosuppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that ismore your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to seea knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine andSir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they warewhere Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight towardthem. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled intothe turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, andsaid on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran togetherthat the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smotehim so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--" "Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things, it ruins so many horses. " "That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him towardMarhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight ofthe turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--" "_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to bebroken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaudand support it. " . . . . "So these two knights came together with great random--" I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn'tsay anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble withthe visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. "--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieceson the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse andman he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--" "The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple;the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptionssuffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharasof fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws aboutthem a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are allalike: a couple of people come together with great random--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, andso is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together withgreat random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shieldand the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tailand brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down_he_ goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck, and then there's another elected, and another and another and stillanother, till the material is all used up; and when you come tofigure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor whowhipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiestspectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance?Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boybrast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!" It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturbSandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again, the minute I took off the lid: "Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine withhis spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield, and they aventred their spears, and they came together with allthe might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hardin the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--" "I knew it would. " --"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine andhis horse rushed down to the earth--" "Just so--and brake his back. " --"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled outhis sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus on foot, and therewitheither came unto other eagerly, and smote together with theirswords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised theirhelms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawaine, fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hoursever stronger and stronger and thrice his might was increased. All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his mightincreased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then whenit was come noon--" The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes andsounds of my boyhood days: "N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strikethe gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers forthe Shore-line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yardon't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners, _s-a-n-d_'ches, p--_op_-corn!" --"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine'sstrength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he mightdure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger--" "Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would oneof these people mind a small thing like that. " --"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt thatye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as everI felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, andtherefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passingfeeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the wordthat I should say. And therewith they took off their helms andeither kissed other, and there they swore together either to loveother as brethren--" But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinkingabout what a pity it was that men with such superb strength--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensomeiron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bangeach other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been bornat a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Takea jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, andputs it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world becausehe is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he isa jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and shouldnever have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once youstart a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what isgoing to come of it. When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived thatI had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a longway off with her people. "And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby wasthe head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sittingthereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knightsince it was christened, but he found strange adventures--" "This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son ofIreland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one wouldrecognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a common literary device with the great authors. You shouldmake him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight sinceit was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers. 'You see how much better that sounds. " --"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers. Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hardto say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speedwith usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either salutedother, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, andshe was threescore winter of age or more--" "The _damsel_ was?" "Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--" "Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fitkind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, andfall out when you laugh. " "The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet ofgold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--" Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice fadedout of my hearing! Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her agewho was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whomI shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me backover wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summermornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who ourcaptured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever getto explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughtswere far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vagueway that each of these three knights took one of these three damselsup behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, afteryear and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was ofa piece with the general simplicity of the country. The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon whenAlisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had madepretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some timeor other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements werecharmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass wasdrenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was thelargest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the onewe were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it;she said she had passed it without calling, when she went downto Camelot. CHAPTER XVI MORGAN LE FAY If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirableplaces to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errantwere _not_ persons to be believed--that is, measured by modernstandards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their owntime, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was verysimple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the restwas fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remainedthat if I could find out something about a castle before ringingthe door-bell--I mean hailing the warders--it was the sensiblething to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horsemanmaking the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curiousaddition also--a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearerand read this sign on his tabard: "Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It. " That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposesin view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In thefirst place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsenseof knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I hadstarted a number of these people out--the bravest knights I couldget--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one deviceor another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerousenough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even thesteel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to lookridiculous because he was out of the fashion. Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creatingsuspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanlinessamong the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction thatany Established Church is an established crime, an establishedslave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it inany way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in myown former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the wombof time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had beenborn in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Actand the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men'sliberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an EstablishedAnachronism with. My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on theirtabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got theking to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaricsplendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain tothe lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladieswere afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary'snext move was to get the family together and try it on himself;he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that couldconvince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubtremained, he must catch a hermit--the woods were full of them;saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybodystood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and thatfailed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone. Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the roadthey washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go andget a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the restof his days. As a consequence the workers in the field wereincreasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only twohands; but before I had left home I was already employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was gettingso pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gaspingaround and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk upand down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse upthere than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; andhe was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soapfactory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his househe would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladiespresent, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they wouldswear before children, if the wind was their way when the factorywas going. This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he saidthat this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister ofKing Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm aboutas big as the District of Columbia--you could stand in the middleof it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and "Kingdoms"were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine inJoshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled upbecause they couldn't stretch out without a passport. La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worstfailure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake; yet he hadtried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit;but the hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for thisanimal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his placeamong the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. Andso my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I said: "Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We havebrains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disasterinto an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and thebiggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisementthat will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhornvictory. We will put on your bulletin-board, '_Patronized by theelect_. ' How does that strike you?" "Verily, it is wonderly bethought!" "Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest littleone-line ad, it's a corker. " So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a bravefellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chiefcelebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this oneof mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a differentway, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereasSandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and soI knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when hebade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it. Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she saidthat La Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of thattrip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to theconqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterwardin sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, supposethe victor should decline to accept his spoil? She said that thatwouldn't answer--he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't beregular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be tooburdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chancethat she would desert to him. In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castlewalls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant totell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knewMrs. Le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybodybelieve she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, allher instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with coldmalice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimesmurder was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious asI could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she was beautiful;black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, agehad failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness. She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she couldhave been mistaken for sister to her own son. As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were orderedinto her presence. King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old manwith a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the traditionthat he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also onaccount of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandyhad been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, theconspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask mequestions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have beenmisrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, andas easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with somethingon a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdidhis graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against herknee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way asanother person would have harpooned a rat! Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs inone great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of theold king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The lookhe got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphensin it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroomand called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetlyalong with her talk. I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked shekept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they madeno balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they camewith fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; andwhen they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicateda crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes hadoverlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failedto see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearerthan any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman. And what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon thoseservants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when thelightning flashes out of a cloud. I could have got the habitmyself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he wasalways on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turntoward him but he winced. In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word aboutKing Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated herbrother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded uplike storm; she called for her guards, and said: "Hale me these varlets to the dungeons. " That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say--or do. But not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilestconfidence, and said: "God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It isThe Boss!" Now what a happy idea that was!--and so simple; yet it would neverhave occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots;and this was one of the spots. The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenanceand brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces andblandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover upwith them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said: "La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powerslike to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one whohas vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantmentsI foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you enteredhere. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise youinto some display of your art, as not doubting you would blastthe guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have longbeen childishly curious to see. " The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission.