"A vigorous and handsome count would be better than nothing," the fair girl conceded.
So this presentation was arranged. And tall Emmerick was infatuated the moment he saw the queen's beguiling innocent young face. Forthwith the high Count of Poictesme proclaimed a banquet: and when all were dancing, Holden returned to the void frame; and he considered that lost tropic garden, bereft now forever of the radiant and gray-eyed slip of womanhood whom he had loved, and who would content his life no more.
Guivric came with him: and these two old men kept silence.
§ 78
"We may deduce that the painter loved her thirteen centuries ago," says Guivric,—"erecting loveliness where there was little to build upon. Thus it is that the brain of man creates women more desirable than may be created by other means: and such women endure. But the women children that have two parents, may endure only a very little longer than may the scant delights a man can get in gardens that bear bitter fruit or else insipid fruit: for these women have no such Delta as had your lost Radegonde, no more than has that dispossessed lean ogling flirt of whom young Emmerick will presently be tiring."
Moreover Guivric said:
"The women who are born of man's brain have no flaw in them and no seed of death. There was a Radegonde conceived in Camwy, that walked the glittering pavements of Lacre Kai, and wedded Elphànor, King of Kings, and trysted with many lovers, and later trysted with small worms: but in the artist's brain was conceived another Radegonde, a maid who walks the sun-paths of eternity, and who is new-born with every April. Thus it was of old: and this tale is not ended."
And Guivric said also:
"The women who are born of man's brain bear to their lovers no issue save dissatisfaction. Their ways are lovely, but contentment does not abide in these ways: and he that follows after the women who are born of man's brain is wounded subtilely with wounds which may not ever be quite healed. So let no woman with two parents cosset him: for she toils vainly and in large peril; because it is upon her that he will requite his subtile wounding, just as you, poor Holden, were the destruction of that golden-haired young wife who loved you, and whom you could not love."
§ 79