overpleased at being disturbed, and the man in particular was troubled,
as in reason he well might be, by the task assigned him.

"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should
sing--this song?"

"It is my will," the Countess said.

And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "What I have
written I shall not disown in any company. It is not, look you, of my
own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if she bade me would I sing
this song as willingly before Queen Ysabeau, for, Christ aid me! the
song is true."

Sang Sir Gregory:

"_Dame Ysabeau, la prophecie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--_"

and so on. It was a lengthy ditty and in its wording not
oversqueamish; the Queen's career in England was detailed without any
stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir
Gregory sang it with an incisive gusto, though it seemed to him to
countersign his death-warrant; and with the vigor that a mangled snake
summons for its last hideous stroke, it seemed to Ysabeau regretful of
an ancient spring.

_Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, and for obvious reasons, his
translator would prefer to do otherwise._

Only the minstrel added, though Lord Berners did not notice it, a
fire-new peroration.

Sang Sir Gregory:

"_Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gemit--
Peu pense a ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille--et la vois si--
Et grandement suis esbahi._"

And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without
speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance
caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had
annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and
meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. Then she flung the
fragments from her, and resting the dagger's point upon the arm of her
chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately
twirled the brilliant weapon.

"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last,
"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."

"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame
Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock
there has been no such miracle recorded."

"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges
a master she will follow him as faithfully as any do