r account."

"Hush, hush," answered her more experienced and more observant comrade;
"she is of that proud house of Plantagenet who never own that a hurt
grieves them. While they have themselves been bleeding to death, under a
mortal wound, they have been known to bind up the scratches sustained
by their more faint-hearted comrades. Florise, we have done frightfully
wrong, and, for my own part, I would buy with every jewel I have that
our fatal jest had remained unacted."

CHAPTER XVIII.

This work desires a planetary intelligence
Of Jupiter and Sol; and those great spirits
Are proud, fantastical. It asks great charges
To entice them from the guiding of their spheres,
To wait on mortals.
ALBUMAZAR.

The hermit followed the ladies from the pavilion of Richard, as shadow
follows a beam of sunshine when the clouds are driving over the face of
the sun. But he turned on the threshold, and held up his hand towards
the King in a warning, or almost a menacing posture, as he said, "Woe to
him who rejects the counsel of the church, and betaketh himself to the
foul divan of the infidel! King Richard, I do not yet shake the dust
from my feet and depart from thy encampment; the sword falls not--but it
hangs but by a hair. Haughty monarch, we shall meet again."

"Be it so, haughty priest," returned Richard, "prouder in thy goatskins
than princes in purple and fine linen."

The hermit vanished from the tent, and the King continued, addressing
the Arabian, "Do the dervises of the East, wise Hakim, use such
familiarity with their princes?"

"The dervise," replied Adonbec, "should be either a sage or a madman;
there is no middle course for him who wears the khirkhah, [Literally,
the torn robe. The habit of the dervises is so called.] who watches
by night, and fasts by day. Hence hath he either wisdom enough to bear
himself discreetly in the presence of princes; or else, having no reason
bestowed on him, he is not responsible for his own actions."

"Methinks our monks have adopted chiefly the latter character," said
Richard. "But to the matter. In what can I pleasure you, my learned
physician?"

"Great King," said El Hakim, making his profound Oriental obeisance,
"let thy servant speak one word, and yet live. I would remind thee
that thou owest--not to me, their humble instrument--but to the
Intelligences, whose benefits I dispense to mortals, a life--"

"And I warrant me thou wouldst