She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle, where the Duke awaited her.
"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls"
—and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"
Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess—but she is the same!), the little lady rode forward:
"When suddenly appeared the Duke."
She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky sullied by a chill wind,
"The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day."
But the brave spirit survived. In a day or two she was well again, as if she could not believe that God did not mean her to be content and glad in His sight. "So, smiling as at first went she." She was filled to the brim with energy; there never was such a wife as she would have made for a shepherd, a miner, a huntsman—and this huntsman, who has had a beloved wife, knows what he is saying.
"She was active, stirring, all fire—
Could not rest, could not tire—
To a stone she might have given life! . . .
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all."
For the castle was crammed with retainers, and the Duke's plan permitted a wife, at most, to meet his eye with the other trophies in the hall and out of it: