As for her
eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or
ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for
her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which
nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily
acquiescent to the custom of the country.
Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I
do not understand."
Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I
love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die.
Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live."
The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to
Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of
forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and
transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some
divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this
place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her
life it was so.
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