Sang Sir Gregory:
"Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer—"
and so on. It was a lengthy ditty and in its wording not oversqueamish; the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory sang it with an incisive gusto, though it seemed to him to countersign his death-warrant; and with the vigor that a mangled snake summons for its last hideous stroke, it seemed to Ysabeau regretful of an ancient spring.
Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, and for obvious reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.
Only the minstrel added, though Lord Berners did not notice it, a fire-new peroration.
Sang Sir Gregory:
"Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit—
Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille—et la vois si—
Et grandement suis esbahi."
And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. Then she flung the fragments from her, and resting the dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon.
"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last, "nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."
"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been no such miracle recorded."