Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter,
whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen--as I, my little
Miguel, have often seen--a man viewing his death-wound with a face of
stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel
and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say--a woman's twisted
and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of
some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush
this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout
that I ride southward."
Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the
page stubbornly said.
"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased
the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust
to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being
fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore
the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without
faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more
an inconsiderable matter.
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