“But what axe so sharp as her frown?” said Frank in most lugubrious tone.
Amyas began to whistle in a very rude way.
“Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her.”
“No, I can't. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever setting eyes on the said head.”
“Plato's Troglodytes regretted not that sunlight which they had never beheld.”
Amyas, not understanding this recondite conceit, made no answer to it, and there the matter ended for the time. But at last Frank obtained his audience; and after a couple of hours' absence returned quite pale and exhausted.
“Thank Heaven, it is over! She was very angry at first—what else could she be?—and upbraided me with having set my love so low. I could only answer, that my fatal fault was committed before the sight of her had taught me what was supremely lovely, and only worthy of admiration. Then she accused me of disloyalty in having taken an oath which bound me to the service of another than her. I confessed my sin with tears, and when she threatened punishment, pleaded that the offence had avenged itself heavily already,—for what worse punishment than exile from the sunlight of her presence, into the outer darkness which reigns where she is not? Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant, to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead by the assassin's knife? At which most pathetic demand I could only throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited my sentence. Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, 'What say you, Mouton? Is he humbled sufficiently?' and so dismissed me.”
“Heigh-ho!” yawned Amyas;
“If the bridge had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.”
“Amyas! Amyas!” quoth Frank, solemnly, “you know not what power over the soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal the tenderness of the woman. Had I my will, there should be in every realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law: whereby no kings, but only queens should rule mankind. Then would weakness and not power be to man the symbol of divinity; love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience.”