Philip, his cousin. Then he dropped brooding eyes to the Square below,
where the girl Joan assisted her father by the fire, and moved like a
mother of kings.

"You wish a woman for the castle, father," he said. "Then a woman we
shall have. Holy Church may not give me another wife, but I shall take
one. And I shall have a son."

* * * * *

The child Clotilde had watched it all from a window. Because she was
very high the thing she saw most plainly was the cross on the donkey's
back. Far out over the plain was a moving figure which might or might
not have been the Jew. She chose to think it was.

"One of Your people," she said toward the crucifix. "I have done the
good deed."

She was a little frightened, for all her high head.

Other Christmases she and the lady her mother had sat hand in hand, and
listened to the roystering.

"They are drunk," Clotilde would say.

But her mother would stroke her hand and reply:

"They but rejoice that our Lord is born."

So the child Clotilde stood at her window and gazed to where the plain