ANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN
DISGUISE AND IN ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY
HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE COUNTRY; AND IN
THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EITHER
THE SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME.

The Story of the Sestina

In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of
Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account
of the Barons' War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more
remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at
outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may
have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute
to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition.

Within the half-hour after de Giars' death (here one overtakes Nicolas
mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor
of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at
irritable converse.

First, "If the woman be hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed
her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me."

"This woman demands to see the master of the house," the steward then
retorted.

"O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the house has no
time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of the night as an
eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not do so in the
beginning, you dolt?" He got for answer only a deferential cough, and
very shortly continued: "This is remarkably vexatious. _Vox et praeterea
nihil_,--which signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women is always
delightful. Admit her." This was done, and Dame Alianora came into an
apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shrivelled gentleman of
fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled.

He presently said, "You may go, Yeck." He had risen, the magisterial
attitude with which he had awaited her advent cast aside. "O God!" he
said; "you, madame!" His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at
the air.

Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval
before she said, "I do not recognize you, messire."

"And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago Count
Berenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his court four daughters,
each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king. First, Margaret, the
eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the second and most
beautiful of these daugh