"I am moved, good hermit," replied the knight sadly, "that now--at the very moment when all the dearest hopes of my heart call on me to push forward to the highest goal of honour, and when the way is clear before me--that the emptiness of my purse--the perfect beggary of my fortunes, casts a bar in my way that I cannot overleap. Read that letter, and then know, that, instead of a baron's train, I can but bring ten mounted men to serve prince Arthur; nor are these armed or equipped so that I can look on them without shame. My lodging must be in the field, my food gathered from the earth, till the day of battle; nor dare I join the prince till then, for the expenses of the city suit not those whose purses are so famished as mine."
"Nay, my son," replied the hermit calmly, "think better of thy fortunes. To win much, one must often lose somewhat: and by a small expense, though you may not ruffle it amongst the proudest of the prince's train, you may fit yourself to grace it decently, till such time as in the battle-field you can show how little akin is courage to wealth. This may be surely done at a very small expense of gold."
"A small expense of gold!" exclaimed the young knight impatiently. "I tell thee, good father, I have none! None--no, not a besant!"
"Nay, then," replied the hermit, "something you must sell, to produce more hereafter. That rare carbuncle in your thumb-ring will bring you doubtless gold enough to shine as brightly as the best."
"Nay," said De Coucy, "I part not with that. I would rather cut off the hand it hangs upon, and coin that into gold."
"Some woman's trinket," said the hermit with a frown; for men attached to the church, by whatever ties, were not very favourable to the idolatrous devotion of that age to the fairer sex--a devotion which they might think somewhat trenched upon their rights. "Some woman's trinket, on my life!" said the hermit. "Thou wouldst guard no holy relic so, young man."
"Faith, hermit, you do me wrong," replied De Coucy, without flinching. "Though my love to my lady be next to my duty to my God, yet this is not, as you say, a woman's trinket. 'Twas the gift of a good and noble knight, the Count de Tankerville, to me, then young and going to the Holy Land, put on my finger with many a wise and noble counsel, by which I have striven to guide me since. Death, as thou hast heard, good hermit, has since placed his cold bar between us; but I would not part with this for worlds of ore. I am like the wild Arab of the desert," he added with a smile, "in this sort somewhat superstitious; and I hold this ring, together with the memory of the good man who gave it, as a sort of talisman to guard me from evil spirits."
"Well! if thou wilt not part with it, I cannot help thee," replied the hermit. "Yet I know a certain jeweller would give huge sums of silver for such a stone as that."
"It cannot be!" answered De Coucy. "But now thou mind'st me; I have a bright smaragd, that, in my young days of careless prosperity, I bought of a rich Jew at Ascalon. If it were worth the value that he gave it, 'twere now a fortune to me. I pray thee, gentle hermit, take it with thee to the city. Give it to the jeweller thou speakest of; and bid him, as an honest and true man, send me with all speed what sum he may."
The hermit undertook the charge; and De Coucy instantly sent his page to the chamber, where he had left the emerald, which, being brought down, he committed to the hands of the old man, praying him to make no delay. The hermit, however, still seemed to hanker after the large carbuncle on De Coucy's hand, (which was also, be it remarked, engraved with his signet,) and it was not till the young knight had once and again repeated his refusal, that he rose to depart.