Messire, your
audience is done."
Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell
they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face
I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and
I will go, Jehane."
Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the
wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this
dais--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the
hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.
Sang the jongleur:
"There is a land those hereabout
Ignore ... Its gates are barred
By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt.
These mercifully guard
That land we seek--the land so fair!--
And all the fields thereof,
Where daffodils flaunt everywhere
And ouzels chant of love,--
Lest we attain the Middle-Land,
Whence clouded well-springs rise,
And vipers from a slimy strand
Lift glittering cold eyes.
"Now, the parable all may understand,
And surely you know the name of the land!
Ah, never a guide or ever a chart
May safely lead you about this land,--
The Land of the Human Heart!"
And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed
for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint
Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane,
married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that
name to reign.
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