some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush
this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout
that I ride southward."

Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the
page stubbornly said.

"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased
the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust
to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being
fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore
the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without
faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more
an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the
Romans--" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter,
whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My
little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only
daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for
protection to five soldiers--that is, to the five senses,--to preserve
it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the
too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this
world--"

"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure
you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her
God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love
with de Gâtinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer
and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her
sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I
to deduce from this?"