"Hail to you, ladies, and farewell! for you and I have done with love. Well, love is very pleasant to observe as he advances, overthrowing all ancient memories with laughter. And yet for each gay lover who concedes the lordship of love, and wears intrepidly love's liveries, the end of all is death. Love's sowing is more agreeable than love's harvest: or, let us put it, he allures us into byways leading nowhither, among blossoms which fall before the first rough wind: so at the last, with much excitement and breath and valuable time quite wasted, we find that the end of all is death. Then would it have been more shrewd, dear ladies, to have avoided love? To the contrary, we were unspeakably wise to indulge the high-hearted insanity that love induced; since love alone can lend young people rapture, however transiently, in a world wherein the result of every human endeavor is transient, and the end of all is death."
Then Jurgen courteously bowed to his dead loves, and left them, and went forward as the cave stretched.
But now the light was behind him, so that Jurgen's shadow, as he came to a sharp turn in the cave, loomed suddenly upon the cave wall, confronting him. This shadow was clear-cut and unarguable.
Jurgen regarded it intently. He turned this way, then the other; he looked behind him, raised one hand, shook his head tentatively; then he twisted his head sideways with his chin well lifted, and squinted so as to get a profile view of this shadow. Whatever Jurgen did the shadow repeated, which was natural enough. The odd part was that it in nothing resembled the shadow which ought to attend any man, and this was an uncomfortable discovery to make in loneliness deep under ground.
"I do not exactly like this," said Jurgen. "Upon my word, I do not like this at all. It does not seem fair. It is perfectly preposterous. Well"—and here he shrugged,—"well, and what could anybody expect me to do about it? Ah, what indeed! So I shall treat the incident with dignified contempt, and continue my exploration of this cave."
9.
The Orthodox Rescue of Guenevere
Now the tale tells how the cave narrowed and again turned sharply, so that Jurgen came as through a corridor into quite another sort of underground chamber. Yet this also was a discomfortable place.
Here suspended from the roof of the vault was a kettle of quivering red flames. These lighted a very old and villainous looking man in full armor, girded with a sword, and crowned royally: he sat erect upon a throne, motionless, with staring eyes that saw nothing. Back of him Jurgen noted many warriors seated in rows, and all staring at Jurgen with wide-open eyes that saw nothing. The red flaming of the kettle was reflected in all these eyes, and to observe this was not pleasant.
Jurgen waited non-committally. Nothing happened. Then Jurgen saw that at this unengaging monarch's feet were three chests. The lids had been ripped from two of them, and these were filled with silver coins. Upon the middle chest, immediately before the king, sat a woman, with her face resting against the knees of the glaring, withered, motionless, old rascal.