Demetrios shrugged. Demetrios said:
"For such as I am, to love is dangerous. For such as I am, nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft, or marks its passage by more direful ruin. But you do not know Euripides?—a fidgety-footed liar, Messire the Comte, who occasionally blunders into the clumsiest truths. Yes, he is perfectly right; all things this goddess laughingly demolishes while she essays haphazard flights about the world as unforeseeably as travels a bee. And, like the bee, she wilfully dispenses honey, and at other times a wound."
Said Perion, who was no scholar:
"I glory in our difference. For such as I am, love is sufficient proof that man was fashioned in God's image."
"Ey, there is no accounting for a taste in aphorisms," Demetrios replied. He said, "Now I embark." Yet he delayed, and spoke with unaccustomed awkwardness. "Come, you who have been generous till this! will you compel me to desert you here—quite penniless?"
Said Perion:
"I may accept a sword from you. I do accept it gladly. But I may not accept anything else."
"That would have been my answer. I am a lucky man," Demetrios said, "to have provoked an enemy so worthy of my opposition. We two have fought an honest and notable duel, wherein our weapons were not made of steel. I pray you harry me as quickly as you may; and then we will fight with swords till I am rid of you or you of me."
"Assuredly, I shall not fail you," answered Perion.
These two embraced and kissed each other. Afterward Demetrios went into his own country, and Perion remained, girt with the magic sword Flamberge. It was not all at once Perion recollected that the wearer of Flamberge is unconquerable, if ancient histories are to be believed, for in deduction Perion was leisurely.