HYVARNION AND RIVANONE
"What are the herbs you seek, Rivanone?" asked Hyvarnion, coming nearer. She held up a sprig of green in her white hand. "See, this is the vervain," she answered in song; "this brings happiness and heart's ease. But I seek two others which I have not found. The second opens the eyes of the blind. And the third,—few may ever find that precious herb,—the third is the root of life, and at its touch death flees away. Alas! Fair Sir, I cannot find those two, though some day I feel that I shall need them both most sorely." Rivanone sighed and two tears stood like dewdrops in her flower eyes.
But Hyvarnion had now come very close. "Still, you have found the first, which gives happiness, little Queen," he sang tenderly. "Have you not happiness to share with me, Rivanone?" Then the maiden looked up in his eyes and smiled, and held out to him a sprig of the green vervain.
"For my King," she sang, just as he had dreamed. And then he did just what she had dreamed he would do; but that is a secret which I cannot tell. For no one knows all that a maiden dreams.
And after this and that they came back to the King's palace hand in hand, singing a beautiful song which together they had made about Happiness. So they were married at the court, and the King did them great honor and made them King and Queen of music and of song.
So, happily they lived and happily they sang in their little Kingdom of Poesie,—for did they not possess the herb of joy which Rivanone had found and shared with Hyvarnion, her King?
II.
BUT it was a pity that Rivanone had not also found those other plants for which she had been seeking, the root which brings light to the blind, and the root which gives life to the dying. Because Rivanone had foreseen only too well the need of them which would come to her. For when, after a year or two, their little son was born, his blue eyes were sightless and all the colored wonders of the world were secrets which he could never know. So they named him Hervé, which means Bitterness,—the first bitterness which had come into their lives of joy. But it was not the last. Not long after the little Hervé came, golden-haired Hyvarnion lay ill and dying. And because on that spring morning, Rivanone had not found the herb of life, she could not keep him from going away to find it for himself in that fair country where it is the only plant that grows, with wonderful blossoms which no living man has ever seen.