"Sure I loved her," flared the smith. "Eh—bon Dieu! I wouldn't have coupled up with her if I hadn't loved her; but, also, I loved something else. I loved my work. I'm a smith. I'm a shoer of horses, a forger of iron, a worker in steel. I'm what the good God made me, and I've the good God's work to do!
"So after a certain amount of honeymoon I had to get back to my forge. Joseph the carter, his Percherons; who could shoe them but me?"
"And she didn't like that?"
"No. When I made her sit in my forge she pined and whined and refused to eat. I was crazy. But I did my work. And this morning when I awoke I found that she had slipped away."
"You were already enchained," said his highness, "by your work."
The smith misunderstood.
"You can see it was no trick chain," he said, holding up the chain he himself had forged and playing with the links.
"Aye," said the duke, for he loved these philosophic disquisitions, when he was in the mood for them. "Aye, chains are the nature of the universe. The planets are chained. The immortal soul is chained to the mortal body. The body itself is chained to its lusts and frailties."
"I'm a smith," said Gaspard, "and I want to work."
"We're not happy when we are chained," the duke continued to reflect aloud. "But I doubt that we'd be happier were our chains to disappear. No matter." He regarded Gaspard the smith with real benignancy. "At least you've proven the fatal quality of one particular chain—the thing I wanted to prove. And—you've saved the princess."