That evening in the black tower Foulque would discuss family fortunes, and how Castel-Noir might be first recovered, then enlarged. Garin listened, spoke when the elder brother paused for him to speak. It seemed that he wished somehow to better the condition of tenants and serfs, to find and teach better methods of living. Foulque jerked aside from that. “We are good masters. Ask any one without this hall!”
“Good masters?... We may be. But—”
Foulque struck at the fire with his crutch. “You are a poet—I am a practical man. Let us leave dreaming!... Raimbaut’s castle will be rebuilt by the next of kin.”
“Dreaming?... What is dreaming?”
Foulque left his chair, and limped to and fro before the huge fireplace. Garin from the settle corner watched him. The light played over both and reddened the ancient hall. “Garin,” said Foulque. “knightly fame is good and fame of a poet is good, and emirs’ ransoms are good—God knows they are good! But when will you wed and so build our house?”
“Ah!” said Garin, “did you ever think, Foulque, of how long may be time?”
Foulque waved his hand. “You should not play with it! You should think of the future! They say that you love one whom you call the Fair Goal—”
But Garin, rising, moved to a deep window, and looking out, breathed the night. “There is the great star in the arm of the cypress!... I used to see that, when I lay in those hot towns of Paynimry.” Nor would he speak again of that manner of building Castel-Noir.
The morrow came and went and the morrow and that morrow’s morrow. December paced by and gave the torch of time to January. January, a cold and dark month, gave the torch to February, a brief and windy one, March had it then, and he had ideas in his head of birds and flowers. April came and the world was green.