“Oh no, for mercy’s sake! I have a pain in my back!”
“Come, come,” said Charles, “are you ill everywhere then?”
“I should not be ill at all,” answered the child, “if only they would let me alone.”
“Do you think to pass your royal life away in dreams like a scholar?” the Emperor asked impatiently. “Such people as that, if indeed it be necessary for the inking of their parchments, may rightly seek out silence, solitude, retirement from the world. But for thee, son of the sword, I would desire warm blood, a lynx’s eye, a fox’s craft, and the strength of Hercules. Why do you cross yourself? Blood of God! What should a lion’s cub be doing with this mimicry of women at their prayers!”
“Hark! It is the Angelus, my Lord Father,” answered the child.
XII
May and June that year were in very truth the months of flowers. Never had Flanders known the hawthorn so fragrant, never the gardens so gay with roses, jasmine, and honeysuckle. And when the wind blew eastwards from England it carried with it the breath of all this flowery land, and the people, at Antwerp and elsewhere, sniffed the air joyfully and cried aloud:
“How good the scent of the wind that blows from Flanders!”
Then it was that the bees were busy sucking honey from the flowers, making wax, and laying their eggs within the hives that were all too small to house the swarms. What workman’s music they made, under that canopy of azure sky that was spread so dazzlingly over the rich earth!