He ended, his eyes slewed craftily upon the other. “From Joseph, through the royal succession,” he said, “descends the gift of interpretation. To me it was just a dream.”
The King looked up. “Pasque-Dieu!” he said—“and to us a providence, since it gives us a pretext for disposing of a pest. Go, go, in God’s name”—he paused to raise his hat—“and be Prior of St. Come.”
He was rid at last of an importunity, though he was only to exchange it for a worse.
He was walking in his garden one day weeks later, when there came towards him an old, blanched figure, feverishly paddling with a pilgrim’s crossed staff and mumbling as he approached. It was the aged Prior of St. Come, delayed in his return by cross winds and crosser ailments.
Louis, coming to a stop, stood conning the apparition half-petrified. For a moment, indeed, he fancied it to be a veritable wraith, so whitely emaciated looked the face, set in its cloudy fleece of beard and hair, with the eyes like two black borings.
“Adjuva nos, Domine, adjuva nos!” he muttered, crossing himself.
The old man tottered forward, and cried in a shrill tone: “Restore to me my fold, son Louis—restore to me my fold!”
The voice, and, more than it, the words, broke the spell. The King’s lips tightened, shrewd and caustic. Not on such worldly interests were a spirit bent.
“Welcome, father,” he said—“thou art welcome home.”
“No welcome,” cried the old man. “My children disown me; another sits in my place. I but carried my pitcher to the well, and lo! when I returned with it brimming, the door was locked against me. They feign to know me not; they stand and revile me; let me in to them that I may afford good evidence of my identity.”