From below came many voices wailing confusedly. "We weep for Suskind. Suskind is slain with the one weapon that might slay her: and all we weep for Suskind, who was the fairest and the wisest and the most unreasonable of queens. Let all the Hidden Children weep for Suskind, whose heart and life was April, and who plotted courageously against the orderings of unimaginative gods, and who has been butchered to preserve the hair of a quite ordinary child."
Then said the Count of Poictesme: "And that young Manuel who was in his day a wilful champion, and who fretted under ordered wrongs, and who went everywhither with a high head a-boasting that he followed after his own thinking and his own desire,—why, that young fellow also is now silenced and dead. For the well-thought-of Count of Poictesme must be as the will and the faith and as the need of others may dictate: and there is no help for it, and no escape, and our old appearances must be preserved upon this side of the window in order that we may all stay sane."
"We weep, and with long weeping raise the dirge for Suskind—!"
"But I, who do not weep,—I raise the dirge for Manuel. For I must henceforward be reasonable in all things, and I shall never be quite discontented any more: and I must feed and sleep as the beasts do, and it may be that I shall even fall to thinking complacently about my death and glorious resurrection. Yes, yes, all this is certain, and I may not ever go a-traveling everywhither to see the ends of this world and judge them: and the desire to do so no longer moves in me, for there is a cloud about my goings, and there is a whispering which follows me, and I too fall away into the acquiescence of beasts. Meanwhile no hair of the child's head has been injured, and I am content."
"Let all the Hidden Children, and all else that lives except the tall gray son of Oriander, whose blood is harsh sea-water, weep for Suskind! Suskind is dead, that was unstained by human sin and unredeemed by Christ's dear blood, and youth has perished from the world. Oh, let us weep, for all the world grows chill and gray as Oriander's son."
"And Oriander too is dead, as I well know that slew him in my hour. Now my hour passes; and I pass with it, to make way for the needs of my children, as he perforce made way for me. And in time these children, and their children after them, pass thus, and always age must be in one mode or another slain by youth. Now why this should be so, I cannot guess, nor do I see that much good comes of it, nor do I find that in myself which warrants any confidences from the most high controlling gods. But I am certain that no hair of the child's head has been injured; and I am certain that I am content."
Thus speaking, the old fellow closed the window.
And within the moment little Melicent came to molest him, and she was unusually dirty and disheveled, for she had been rolling on the terrace pavement, and had broken half the fastenings from her clothing: and Dom Manuel wiped her nose rather forlornly. Of a sudden he laughed and kissed her. And Count Manuel said he must send for masons to wall up the third window of Ageus, so that it might not ever be opened any more in Count Manuel's day for him to breathe through it the dim sweet-scented air of spring.
