"No, that would not do at all: for there is in the life of a champion
too much of turmoil and of buffetings and murderings to suit me, who am
a peace-loving person. Besides, to the champion who rescues the Lady
Gisèle will be given her hand in marriage, and as I have a wife, I know
that to have two wives would lead to twice too much dissension to suit
me, who am a peace-loving person. So I think it is you who had better
take the sword and the adventure."

"Well," Manuel said, "much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife are
finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs."

So Manuel girded on the charmed scabbard, and with the charmed sword he
sadly demolished the clay figure he could not get quite right. Then
Manuel sheathed Flamberge, and Manuel cried farewell to the pigs.

"I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die
valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has
but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs,
to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge
my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my
pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of
earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while
my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged:
and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good
bacon."

"So much rhetoric for the pigs," says the stranger, "is well enough, and
likely to please them. But come, is there not some girl or another to
whom you should be saying good-bye with other things than words?"