And negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency with a parrot-like reiteration of the trivial circumstance that already the bargain was signed and sworn to; and, in consequence, while daily they fumed over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he was, upon one pretext or another, very largely in the company of his affianced wife, Dame Blanch.
This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she compelled the eye, it is recorded, not gently but in a superb fashion. And Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man, near sixty; huge and fair he was, with a crisp beard, and stalwart as a tower; and the better-read at Mezelais likened the couple to Sieur Hercules at the feet of Queen Omphale when they saw the two so much together.
The ensuing Wednesday the court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueïl, which stand thick about the chateau; and upon that day these two had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know nowadays it was not merely the trees she considered.
Dame Blanch, it seemed, was undisposed to mirth. "For we have slain the stag, beau sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day we have had our sport of death,—and presently the gay years wind past us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we will not understand, and we will wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have his sport of us, as in atonement." Here her big eyes shone, as the sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohé, I have known such happiness of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die." And again the heavily fringed eyelids lifted, and within the moment sank contentedly.
For the King had murmured "Happiness!" and his glance was rapacious.
"But I am discourteous," Blanch said, "to prate of death thus drearily. Let us flout him, then, with some gay song." And toward Sire Edward she handed Rigon's lute.
The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked," Sire Edward said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the very lips that gibed at him remains but a little dust. Nay, rather should I who already stand beneath a lifted sword make for my immediate conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service."
Sang Sire Edward:
"I sing of Death, that cometh to the king,
And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne,
And drowns his glory and his warfaring
In unrecorded dim oblivion,
And girds another with the sword thereof,
And sets another in his stead to reign,
What time the monarch nakedly must gain
Styx' hither shore and nakedly complain
'Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love.
"For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king
He raises in the place of Prester John,
Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering
Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon,
The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof,
And prowess of great captains—of Gawayne,
Darius, Jeshua, and Charlemaigne—
Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain
And get no grace of him nor any love.