Chivalry quotes

“I shall regret de Giars,” the Queen acknowledged, “for he made excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?—foh! the man had a face like a horse.” Again her mood changed. “

Many persons have died for me, my friend. At first I wept for them, but now I am dry of tears.

”

When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. “

Mon bel esper! my fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses⁠—thirty years ago!

Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund.”

But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color in his face. “Presently men will build here, my Queen.

Presently, as in legend was reborn the Arabian bird, arises from these ashes a lordlier and more spacious town.

”

“Are you not afraid?” she breathed.

“Of course I am afraid,” said Messire Heleigh, irritably.

After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each other in their tunics. So for the first time in the journey Osmund’s long falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his dagger, as Camoys had none.

“I will not shame you,” the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change of voice: “O my Osmund!

My Osmund, you have a folly that is divine, and I lack it.

”

The English King strode forward. “Shallow trickster!” Sire Edward thundered. “Am I not afraid? You grimacing baby, do you think to ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rattrap?

Wise persons do not hunt lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rattrap, fair cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and attacks under the cover of darkness

—as do you and your seven skulkers!” The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had drawn back a little.

“

I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only God, but also my own scrutiny.

” He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. “I love you; all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference.

But the boy kept momentary silence.

Not even in youth were the men of his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts

; yesterday in the shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate.

“I rejoice,” the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, “that we have conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else—Oh, horrible!” She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish.

Here in little you have the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing of course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth by John Copeland was a calamity.

He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded by the Queen’s five retainers. “In the rout I took him,” said John Copeland;

“

As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall have mine in love.

Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its preeminence.

She does not love me, and she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband’s finger to be injured. Yet she surpasses all others so utterly that

I would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise.

”

“Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this troubadourish fashion.

Even the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess.

I have read in an old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told him to begone. ‘Do not the spires show you, O son of darkness’ they clamored, ‘that the place is holy?’

for if I did, I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor anyone may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel place of frost and sun.

Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him.

Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to stand the higher with the other’s corpse as his pedestal;

Gwyllem said: “This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable.

Only when you love you do not reason.

”

“Heigho!” said Richard, “I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled.

Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a trifle later all four of us shall be dead.

Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself.”

“Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me! I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder is God’s work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of devils. Child! child!” he cried, “

I am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was afraid to concede that anything is serious!

”

The other half of me remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc’s hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires.

I am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, precisely as Owain said.

” This settled, Richard whistled to his dog.

So Richard laughed. “Praise God!” he wildly cried, “

I am the greatest fool unhanged!

”

“Friend, the world smirches us,” she said half-pleadingly, “I have tasted too deep of wealth and power.

I am drunk with a deadly wine, and ever I thirst⁠—I thirst⁠—

”

“But I wore no such chain as this about my neck,” the woman answered, and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls. “

Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will to cast it off.

I lack the will, Antoine.” And now with a sudden shout of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice.

“Friend, the chain is heavy, and I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know of wore no such perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at Vannes. You could have done so, very easily.

But you only talked⁠—oh, Mary pity us! you only talked!⁠—and I could find only a servant where I had sore need to find a master.

Let all women pity me!”

There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very tall, and slim as a rush.

Her eyes were large and black, having an extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink⁠—a lustre at some times uncanny.

Her abundant hair, too, was black, and today seemed doubly sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its brilliancy;

We trammelled kings can never go free of policy—ey, my compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law:

Madame Isabeau’s soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence of the moon drew it hither.

”