The jongleur lifted both hands and beat a measure upon his brow. “Ha! and by Saint Arion and his dolphin you did! A proper squire, singing a hunting stave—Ha!” cried Elias of Montaudon, “I have heard sing a master-poet before he was poet!
“‘In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!’
though, certainly, it was autumn!... I remember as clear as crystal! I was asleep, and you waked me, coming up on a great horse—”
“Just so. I left the saddle and let Paladin graze, and we talked.”
“Clearer than Saint Martha’s well!... The talk was of love, and that you had not yet a lady—By all the saints!” said Elias, “how soon must that have been remedied!”
Garin laughed, but there was rue in his laughter. He suddenly grew grave, the rock-gate before his mind’s eye. “Come! let us have this stain. Shorten, too, my hair.” He took up Elias’s lute and tried its strings. “Play the jongleur—play the jongleur. Every man has in his garde-robe every dress! The king can play the beggar, and the beggar play the king. Be quick, courageous, and certain in the change—so is the trumpet answered!” He put the lute’s ribbon over his head. “It falls night. Hasten, Elias of Montaudon, and while you work tell me your own life these six years! If I make another of you, I will make it like!”
The man in brown and yellow worked.... At last there stood in the lighted room, not a knight and crusader and troubadour, but a jongleur with a brown face, with a somewhat tarnished brown and green attire, with a lute slung by a red ribbon, on his head a cap with a black cock’s feather, at his belt a dagger and sheath of the best Italian make. Dagger and sheath the knight had supplied. It was now full night, and not so long before, from every house of the religious in Roche-de-Frêne, complin would ring. The jongleur in brown and yellow took his leave. He had his fee, he said; likewise a command as to a bridled tongue. The jongleur in brown and green saw him go, then put out the candles, pushed a bench to the window, and sitting down waited for the signal next in order.... At last the bells spoke.
Garin, rising, left the room and descended the stair. The passage below was in darkness, at the exit but one smoky torch. He drew the wide mantle closely about him, pulling the hood over head and face. His step said to the man at the door, “Sir Garin.” He passed, an unquestioned inmate, not clearly seen in the light blown by the autumn wind.