"Not yet," replied De Coucy with a smile: "my fate is yet an unsealed one. But, in faith, good father, I am glad to see thee; for, when thou hast broken thy fast in my hall, I would fain ask thee for some few words of good counsel."
"To follow your own, after you have asked mine?" replied the hermit. "Such is the way with man, at least.--But first, as you say, my son, I will break my fast. Bid some of the lazy herd that of course feed on you, seek me some cresses from the brook, and give me a draught of water."
"Must such be your sole food, good hermit?" demanded De Coucy. "Will not your vow admit of some more nourishing repast, after so long a journey too?"
"I seek nought better," replied the hermit, as De Coucy led him into the hall. "I am not one of those who hold, that man was formed to gnaw the flesh of all harmless beasts, as if he were indeed but a more cowardly sort of tiger. Let your men give me what I ask,--somewhat that never felt the throb of life, or the sting of death,--those wholesome herbs that God gave to be food to all that live, to bless the sight with their beauty, and the smell with their odour, and the palate with their grateful freshness. Give me no tiger's food. But thou lookest sad, my son," he added, gazing in De Coucy's face, from which much of the sparkling expression of undimmed gaiety of heart that used once to shine out in every feature had now passed away.
"I am sad, good hermit," replied the young knight. "Time holds two cups, I have heard say, both of which each man must drink in the course of his life;--either now the sweet, and then the bitter; or the bitter first, and the sweet after; or else, mingling them both together, taste the mixed beverage through existence. Now, I have known much careless happiness in the days past, and I am beginning to quaff off the bitter bowl, sir hermit."
"There is but one resource," said the hermit, "there is but one resource, my son!"
"And what is that?" demanded De Coucy. "Do you mean death?"
"Nay," replied the old man; "I meant Christ's cross. There is the hope, and the succour, and the reward for all evils suffered in this life! Mark me as I sit here before thee:--didst thou ever see a thing more withered--broken--worn? And yet I was once full of green strength, and flourishing--as proud a thing as ever trampled on his mother-earth: rich, honoured, renowned: I was a very giant in my vanity! My sway stretched over wide, wide lands. My lance was always in the vanward of the battle; my voice was heard in courts, and my council was listened to by kings. I held in my arms the first young love of my heart; and, strange to say! that love increased, and grew to such absorbing passion, that, as years rolled on, I quitted all for it--ambition, strife, pride, friendship,--all!"
"Methinks, surely," said De Coucy, with all his feelings for Isadore fresh on his heart's surface, "such were the way to be happy!"
"As much as the way for a gambler to win is to stake all his wealth upon one cast," replied the hermit. "But, mark me! she died, and left me childless--hopeless--alone! And I went out into the world to search for something that might refill the void her loss had left, not in my heart, for that was as a sepulchre to my dead love, never to be opened again;--no, but to fill the void in my thoughts--to give me something to think of--to care for. I went amongst men of my own age (for I was then unbroken), but I found them feelingless or brutal, sensual and voluptuous; either plunderers of their neighbours, or mere eaters and drinkers of fifty. I then went amongst the old; but I found them querulous and tetchy; brimful of their own miseries, and as selfish in their particular pains, as the others in their particular pleasures. I went amongst the young, and there I found generous feelings and unworn thoughts; and free and noble hearts, from which the accursed chisel of time had never hewn out the finer and more exquisite touches of Nature's perfecting hand: but then, I found the wild, ungovernable struggling of the war-horse for the battle-plain; the light, thoughtless impatience of the flower-changing butterfly, and I gave it all up as a hopeless search, and sunk back into my loneliness again. My soul withered; my mind got twisted and awry, like the black stumps of the acacia on the sterile plains of the desert; and I lived on in murmuring grief and misanthropy, till came a blessed light upon my mind, and I found that peace at the foot of Christ's cross, which the world and its things could never give. Then it was I quitted the habitations of men, in whose commune I had found no consolation, and gave myself up to the brighter hopes that opened to me from the world beyond!"