"No, no; we will stay where we are known and with whom we know. All men are not like you."
"As you must, it must needs be," replied Prosper. He kissed each on the cheek, and watched them go hand-in-hand down the glade. The herd closed in upon them, so neither he nor the Argument knows them any more.
Prosper knelt down to pray; but what he found set him to better work.
He found Isoult's wedding-ring.
"By God," he cried, "who made men to labour, I will pray with my hands this turn!"
He ran for his horse and sword. Courage came with his gallop, courage and self-esteem, without which no man ever did anything yet. With self-esteem returned sober thought.
"I can do Malbank in three or four hours. There is light enough for what I have to settle there. I will spare my horse and save time in the end. Meantime I will think this affair out." So said Prosper galloping to Prosper on his feet, the late moralist. His plan was very simply to confront the Abbot with his ring. If that failed he would scour his own country, raise a troop, and lay leaguer on Saint Thorn. He had forgotten Galors. He was soon to have a reminder of that grim fighter.
The doors of the great church stood open, so Prosper rode in. It was cold and dark, and smelt of death and candle-fumes. The pilasters of the nave were already swathed in black velvet; in the choir were great lights set on the floor, in the midst of them a bier. A priest was at a little altar by the bier's head, other cowled figures crouched about it. There was a low murmur of praying, even, whining, and mechanical. On the bier Prosper saw the comely Abbot Richard Dieudonné, in cope and mitre, holding in his hand the staff of his high office. This pastor of the Church was at peace; the man of the world was sober with access of wisdom; the man of modes smiled pleasantly at his secret thoughts. Very handsome, very remote, very pure he looked; for so death purges off the dross which we work into the good clay.
Prosper, meditative always at the sight of death, stood and pondered upon it. Everything was well, no doubt; such things should be! but the indifference of the defunct seemed almost shocking. Do they not care for decent interment? Then he turned to a bystander.
"You mourn for your father?" he asked.
"Master, we do indeed. What! a great lord, a throned and pompous priest, to be felled like a calf; his body spitted like a lark's! No leave asked! You may well judge whether we mourn. I suppose there never was such a mournful affair since a king died in this country."