If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and
they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by
previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and
made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting.
This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after
Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his
apartments at the Hotel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over
an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the
courtyard.
Sang the voice:
"I can find no meaning in life,
That have weighed the world,--and it was
Abundant with folly, and rife
With sorrows brittle as glass,
And with joys that flicker and pass
Like dreams through a fevered head;
And like the dripping of rain
In gardens naked and dead
Is the obdurate thin refrain
Of our youth which is presently dead.
"And she whom alone I have loved
Looks ever with loathing on me,
As one she hath seen disproved
And stained with such smirches as be
Not ever cleansed utterly;
And is both to remember the days
When Destiny fixed her name
As the theme and the goal of my praise;
And my love engenders shame,
And I stain what I strive for and praise.
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