g into the
night. Dawn had purged the east of stars. Day was at hand, the day
whose noon she might not hope to witness. She noted this incuriously.
Then Biatritz came to him, very strangely proud, and yet all tenderness.

"See, now, Raimbaut! because I have loved you as I have loved nothing
else in life, I will not be unworthy of your love. Strike and have
done."

Raimbaut de Vaquieras raised an already bloodied dagger. As emotion
goes, he was bankrupt. He had no longer any dread of hell, because he
thought that, a little later, nothing its shrewdest overseer could plan
would have the power to vex him. She, waiting, smiled. Makrisi,
seated, stretched his legs, put fingertips together with the air of an
attendant amateur. This was better than he had hoped. In such a
posture they heard a bustle of armored men, and when all turned, saw
how a sword protruded through the arras.

"Come out, Guillaume!" people were shouting. "Unkennel, dog! Out,
out, and die!" To such a heralding Mahi de Vernoil came into the room
with mincing steps such as the man affected in an hour of peril. He
first saw what a grisly burden the chest sustained. "Now, by the
Face!" he cried, "if he that cheated me of quieting this filth should
prove to be of gentle birth I will demand of him a duel to the death!"
The curtains were ripped from their hangings as he spoke, and behind
him the candlelight was reflected by the armor of many followers.

Then de Vernoil perceived Raimbaut de Vaquieras, and the spruce little
man bowed ceremoniously. All were still. Composedly, like a
lieutenant before his captain, Mahi narrated how these hunted remnants
of Lovain's army had, as a last cast, that night invaded the chateau,
and had found, thanks to the festival, its men-at-arms in uniform and
inefficient drunkenness. "My tres beau sire," Messire de Vernoil
ended, "will you or nill you, Venaissin is yours this morning. My
knaves have slain Philibert and his bewildered fellow-tipplers with
less effort than is needed to drown as many kittens."

And his followers cried, as upon a signal: "Hail, Prince of Orange!"

It was so like the wonder-working of a dream--this sudden and heroic
uproar--that old Raimbaut de Vaquieras stood reeling, near to intimacy
with fear for the first time. He waited thus, with both hands pressed
before his eyes. He waited thus for a long while, because he was not
used to find chance dealing kindlily with him. Later he s