“O the nightingales! O the moon on the sea! O love!”
“Now let us talk! Where were we when we left the hall?”
“Women blessed and crowned by the worship of Our Lady, the Ever Blessed Virgin—”
“When God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church said, ‘Men, over all the earth, you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every man’s Queen of Heaven—’”
“Then fell a ray that broke into stars! See, they are in Beatrix’s hair and in Tiphaine’s and Adelaide’s and Mélisande’s and Laure’s—”
“O Tanneguy the Prince—! You borrow the nightingale’s note, but you smile in the moonlight!”
“And you are laughing, too, Beatrix!”
Said Guibour: “When the moon drew us forth, it was Beatrix who was speaking against that honour down-drifted upon women—”
“O Guibour the singer! I was not speaking against it! For doing that, I know not what Holy Church would do to me! I had not even a dream wish to speak against it! But here it is—but here it is—what knights so rarely think of! What God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church say is this, ‘Men and women, you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every man’s and every woman’s Queen of Heaven!’—Fair and good! But the Queen is above women as she is above men—and she is in heaven and out of the world—and though the ray comes down and breaks into stars—oh, they are little stars and very faintly about the heads of women! For, see you! it is not because she is woman that she is Queen—for then were she Queen in herself and of herself—but because God and Sire Jesus chose her.... O knights and troubadours, do not the stars shine only about the heads of those ladies whom you choose? And though a music comes down—and I know not well what kind of music it is—yet I know what kind troubadours and knights make of it!—Love—love! Nightingale love—rose-leaf love! Love, love!”
“What kind of love would Beatrix have?”