XXV
The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, and chambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.
The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.
Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.
Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:
“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”
Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:
“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”
“Sit down beside me,” said he.
Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said: