"To take
The dip of certain strata in the north."
The new pupils are summoned to attend her.
"She stood
Among her maidens higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
And from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so
Went forth in long retinue, following up
The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."
Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract—even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.
"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read—no books?
Quoit, tennis-ball—no games? nor deals in that
Which men delight in, martial exercises?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.
We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,
Being other—since we learnt our meaning here,
To uplift the woman's fall'n divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man."
Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."
"'Forbear,' the princess cried, 'Forbear, Sir,' I—
And, heated through and through with wrath and love,
I smote him on the breast; he started up;
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."
That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him:—
"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,
And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:
And you look well too in your woman's dress;
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;
Then men had said—but now—
You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd
Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us—
I wed with thee! I bound by precontract,
Your bride, your bond-slave! not tho' all the gold
That veins the world were packed to make your crown,
And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the mêlée, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up—disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights—a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.