Ettarre had never any liking for this half-scoffing kind of talk, to which the clerk was deplorably prone. “You speak very strangely at times, Horvendile. Wickedness cannot ever be admirable; and to praise it, even in jest, cannot but be displeasing to the Author of us all.”
“Eh, madame, I am not so sure of that. Certainly, the Author of those folk who have figured thus far in your history has not devoted His talents to creating perfect people.”
She wondered at him, and showed as much in the big blue eyes which had troubled so many men’s sleep. “Since time began, there has lived no nobler person or more constant lover than my lord Guiron.”
“Oh, yes, Sir Guiron, I grant you, is very nearly immaculate,” said Horvendile; and he yawned.
“My friend, you have always served him faithfully. We two cannot ever forget how much we have owed in the past to your quick wits and shrewd devices. Yet now your manner troubles me.”
Dame Ettarre spoke the truth, for, knowing the man to be unhappy—and suspecting the reason of his unhappiness, too—she would have comforted him; but Horvendile was not in a confiding mood. Whimsically he says:
“Rather, it is I who am troubled, madame. For envy possesses me, and a faint teasing weariness also possesses me, because I am not as Sir Guiron, and never can be. Look you, they prepare your wedding-feast now, your former sorrows are stingless; and to me, who have served you through hard seasons of adversity, it is as if I had been reading some romance, and had come now to the last page. Already you two grow shadowy; and already I incline to rank Sir Guiron and you, madame, with Arnaud and Fregonde, with Palmerin and Polinarda, with Gui and Floripas—with that fair throng of noted lovers whose innocuous mishaps we follow with pleasant agitation, and whom we dismiss to eternal happiness, with smiling incredulity, as we turn back to a workaday world. For it is necessary now that I return to my own country, and there I shall not ever see you any more.”
Ettarre, in common with the countryside, knew the man hopelessly loved her; and she pitied him to-day beyond wording. Happiness is a famed breeder of magnanimity. “My poor friend, we must get you a wife. Are there no women in your country?”
“Ah, but there is never any woman in one’s own country whom one can love, madame,” replies Horvendile shrewdly. “For love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood. Now, I have been so unfortunate as to find the women of my country lacking in reticence. I know their opinions concerning everything—touching God and God’s private intentions, and touching me, and the people across the road—and how these women’s clothes are adjusted, and what they eat for breakfast, and what men have kissed them: there is no room for illusion anywhere. Nay, more: I am familiar with the mothers of these women, and in them I see quite plainly what these women will be some twenty years from this morning; there is not even room for hope. Ah, no, madame; the women of my country are the pleasantest of comrades, and the helpfullest of wives: but I cannot conceal it from myself that, after all, they are only human beings; and therefore it has never been possible for me to love any one of them.”
“And am I not, then, a human being, poor Horvendile?”