“A princess is easier to get, because a princess is easier to make. A sword, far less a magic sword like Flamberge, cannot be fashioned without long training and preparation and special knowledge. But no man needs more than privacy and a queen’s goodwill to make a princess.”
“I confess, Monsieur Janicot, that your logic is indisputable. Well, when at the winter solstice you hold your Festival of the Wheel, I shall not sacrifice to you. That would be to relapse into the old evil ways of heathenry, a relapse for which is appointed an agonizing reproof, administered in realms unnecessary to mention, but doubtless familiar to you. However, I shall be glad to tender you a suitable Christmas present, since that sacred season falls at the same time.”
“You may call it whatever you prefer. But it must be a worthy gift that one offers me at my Yule Feast.”
“You shall have—not as a sacrifice, you understand, but as a Christmas present,—the greatest man living in France. You shall have no less a gift than the life of that weasel-faced prime-minister who now rules France, the all-powerful Cardinal Dubois. For the rest, your bargain is reasonable: it contains none of those rash mortgagings of the soul, about which—if you will pardon my habitual frankness, Monsieur Janicot,—one has to be careful in all business dealings with your people. So let us subscribe this bond.”
Janicot laughed: his traffic was not in souls, he said; and he said also that Florian, for a nobleman, was deplorably the man of business. None the less, Janicot now produced from his pocket a paper upon which the terms of their bargain happened, rather unaccountably, to be neatly written out: and they both signed this paper, with the pens and ink which Florian had not previously noticed to be laid there so close at hand, upon one of the tree-stumps.
Then Janicot put up the paper, and remarked: “A thing done has an end. For the rest, these fellows will escort you to Brunbelois.”
“And of what fellows do you speak?” asked Florian.
“Why, those servants of mine just behind you,” replied Janicot.
And Florian, turning, saw in the roadway two very hairy persons in an oxcart, drawn by two brown goats which were as large as oxen; and yet Florian was certain no one of these things had been in that place an instant before. This Janicot, however easy to see through had been his traps for Florian, was beyond doubt efficient.
Florian said: “The liveries of your retainers tend somewhat to the capillary. None the less, I shall be deeply honored, monsieur, to be attended by any servants of your household.”