aked body,
the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of some village? or
the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush this body? Well,
it is to prevent a many such spectacles hereabout that I ride
southward."

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

"Not so," the Prince retorted; "since it hath pleased the Emperor of
Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to intrust 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. And 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 Gatinais. 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 fact. And what am I to deduce from
this?"

The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same
Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the
malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but
if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will
abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth
empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue;
but struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of God--they are
astonishingly fruitful in good works."

The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though
you will never know it--and I hate you a little--and I envy you a great
deal."

"Nay," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was ne