Jurgen had not forgotten this Wednesday, this ancient Wednesday upon which Messire de Montors had brought the Confraternity of St. Médard from Brunbelois, to enact a masque of The Birth of Hercules, as the vagabonds were now doing, to hilarious applause. Jurgen remembered it was the day before Bellegarde discovered that Count Emmerick's guest, the Vicomte de Puysange, was in reality the notorious outlaw, Perion de la Forêt. Well, yonder the yet undetected impostor was talking very earnestly with Dame Melicent: and Jurgen knew all that was in store for this pair of lovers.
Meanwhile, as Jurgen reflected, the real Vicomte de Puysange was at this moment lying in a delirium, yonder at Benoit's: to-morrow the true Vicomte would be recognized, and within the year the Vicomte would have married Félise de Soyecourt, and later Jurgen would meet her, in the orchard; and Jurgen knew what was to happen then also.
And Messire de Montors was watching Dame Melicent, sidewise, while he joked with little Ettarre, who was this night permitted to stay up later than usual, in honor of the masque: and Jurgen knew that this young bishop was to become Pope of Rome, no less; and that the child he joked with was to become the woman for possession of whom Guiron des Rocques and the surly-looking small boy yonder, Maugis d'Aigremont, would contend with each other until the country hereabouts had been devastated, and the castle wherein Jurgen now was had been besieged, and this part of it burned. And wildly droll and sad it was to Jurgen thus to remember all that was going to happen to these persons, and to all the other persons who were frolicking in the shadow of their doom and laughing at this trivial masque.
For here—with so much of ruin and failure impending, and with sorrow prepared so soon to smite a many of these revellers in ways foreknown to Jurgen; and with death resistlessly approaching so soon to make an end of almost all this company in some unlovely fashion that Jurgen foreknew exactly,—here laughter seemed unreasonable and ghastly. Why, but Reinault yonder, who laughed so loud, with his cropped head flung back: would Reinault be laughing in quite this manner if he knew the round strong throat he thus exposed was going to be cut like the throat of a calf, while three Burgundians held him? Jurgen knew this thing was to befall Reinault Vinsauf before October was out. So he looked at Reinault's throat, and shudderingly drew in his breath between set teeth.
"And he is worth a score of me, this boy!" thought Jurgen: "and it is I who am going to live to be an old fellow, with my bit of land in fee, years after dirt clogs those bright generous eyes, and years after this fine big-hearted boy is wasted! And I shall forget all about him, too. Marion l'Edol, that very pretty girl behind him, is to become a blotched and toothless haunter of alleys, a leering plucker at men's sleeves! And blue-eyed Colin here, with his baby mouth, is to be hanged for that matter of coin-clipping—let me recall, now,—yes, within six years of to-night! Well, but in a way, these people are blessed in lacking foresight. For they laugh, and I cannot laugh, and to me their laughter is more terrible than weeping. Yes, they may be very wise in not glooming over what is inevitable; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are wrong: but still, at the same time—! And assuredly, living seems to me in everything a wasteful and inequitable process."
Thus Jurgen, while the others passed a very pleasant evening.
And presently, when the masque was over, Dorothy and Jurgen went out upon the terrace, to the east of Bellegarde, and so came to an unforgotten world of moonlight. They sat upon a bench of carved stone near the balustrade which overlooked the highway: and the boy and the girl gazed wistfully beyond the highway, over luminous valleys and tree-tops. Just so they had sat there, as Jurgen perfectly remembered, when Mother Sereda first used this Wednesday.
"My Heart's Desire," says Jurgen, "I am sad to-night. For I am thinking of what life will do to us, and what offal the years will make of you and me."
"My own sweetheart," says she, "and do we not know very well what is to happen?" And Dorothy began to talk of all the splendid things that Jurgen was to do, and of the happy life which was to be theirs together.
"It is horrible," he said: "for we are more fine than we shall ever be hereafter. We have a splendor for which the world has no employment. It will be wasted. And such wastage is not fair."