Then answered the Duke singing on this wise:

"Good Pertinax, if on a tree
Yon rogue were swinging high
A deader rogue no man could see--
'He's but a rogue!' says you to me,
'But a living rogue!' says I.

"And since he now alive doth go
More honest he may die,
Yon rogue an honest man may grow,
If we but give him time, I trow,
Says I to you, says I."

At this, Sir Pertinax growled in his beard--


My daughter GILLIAN interrupteth:

GILL: A beard? O father--beard will never do!
No proper knight a beard ever grew.'
No knight could really romantic be
Who wore a beard! So, father, to please me,
No beard; they are, I think, such scrubby things--

MYSELF: Yet they are worn, sometimes, by poets and kings.

GILL: But your knight--

MYSELF: Oh, all right,