"He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated whether they were the eyes of God or gases which burned, and he demonstrated, very clearly, that neither existed; and at times he stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.
"And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, as yet I have not eaten all my apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for I had walked in the trodden path."
Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince."
"Nay, my little Miguel, I do but paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we know that every path, whether it be my trodden one or some byway through your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice—or to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly earned, or to come as some roisterer haled before the magistrate."
"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy interval, "although I decline—and emphatically—to believe you."
The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as though he were a patriarch; "but we have sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my little Miguel."
Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise—" but Miguel de Rueda choked. "Oh, I understand! in part I understand!" the page wailed, and now it was Prince Edward who comforted Miguel de Rueda.
For the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the darkness to note how soft it was, since the man was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be, and said:
"One must play the game, my lad. We are no little people, she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cog at dice."
The same night Miguel de Rueda sobbed through the prayer which Saint Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of God: