This was done. The false knight who had married her was brought also, and they told all the wickedness they had done to the poor wolf. Then the King caused the wolf's stolen clothes to be fetched. But the wolf acted as if he did not see the clothes.
"Sire," said the councilor, "if this beast is a werewolf he will not change back into his human shape until he is alone."
They left him alone in the King's chamber, and put the clothes beside him. Then they waited for a long time. Lo, when they entered the chamber again, there lay the long-lost knight in a deep sleep on the King's bed! Quickly did the King run to him and embrace him, and after that he restored to him all his lost lands, and he banished the false wife and her second husband from the country. And they who were banished lived in a strange land, and all the girls among their children and grandchildren were without noses.
So close we this little golden door—not the less precious because little—over which is written in letters all boys and girls should love: Marie de France, who wrote "The Werewolf."
[IX]
AT GEOFFREY'S WINDOW
Among all the golden doors in the Great Palace of English Literature about which we are coming to know something, and through some of which we have already passed, there was one golden window on the stairway of the palace. This window on the stairway of the palace looked out upon a busy town and down upon the windings of the river Wye, and off upon hills and upon the ruins of a wonderful old abbey called Tintern Abbey, about which, some six hundred years later, an English poet called William Wordsworth was to write a poem called "Tintern Abbey." Wordsworth wrote "We Are Seven," and also this little poem about a butterfly:
I've watched you now a full half-hour,
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! Not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees
And calls you forth again.
This plot of orchard ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days when we were young;
Sweet childish days that were as long
As twenty days are now.