On this Reicht stopped, and pouted, and looked like a little basilisk at the inspired model who caused her woe. He retorted with unshaken admiration. The situation was at last dissolved by the artist's wrist becoming cramped from disuse; this was not, however, until she had made a rough but noble sketch. "I can work no more at present," said she, sorrowfully.
"Then, mistress, I may go and mind my pot?"
"Ay, ay, go to your pot! And get into it, do; you will find your soul in it: so then you will all be together."
"Well, but Reicht," said Catherine, laughing, "she turned you off."
"Boo, boo, boo!" said Reicht, contemptuously. "When she wants to get rid of me, let her turn herself off and die. I am sure she is old enough for't. But take your time, mistress; if you are in no hurry, no more am I. When that day doth come, 'twill take a man to dry my eyes: and if you should be in the same mind then, soldier, you can say so; and if you are not, why, 'twill be all one to Reicht Heynes."
And the plain speaker went her way. But her words did not fall to the ground. Neither of her female hearers could disguise from herself that this blunt girl, solitary herself, had probably read Margaret Brandt aright, and that she had gone away from Sevenbergen broken hearted.
Catherine and Denys bade the Van Eyck adieu, and that same afternoon Denys set out on a wild goose chase. His plan, like all great things, was simple. He should go to a hundred towns and villages, and ask in each after an old physician with a fair daughter, and an old long-bow soldier. He should inquire of the burgomasters about all new-comers, and should go to the fountains and watch the women and girls as they came with their pitchers for water.
And away he went, and was months and months on the tramp and could not find her.
Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own reward.
Those, who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alas! their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind. But those, who look before they babble or scribble, will see, and say, that men, who risk their lives habitually, thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, and not for innocent tranquillity.