free from these modern morbid considerations of anatomy, and it does you
credit."

"No, King, I like this figure well enough, now that it is done, but it
is not, I somehow know, the figure I desire to make. No, I must follow
after my own thinking and my own desires, and I do not need holiness."

"You artists!" the King said. "But there is more than mud upon your
mind."

"In fact, I am puzzled, King, to see you made a saint of by its being
expected of you."

"But, Count, that ought to grieve nobody, so long as I do not complain,
and it is of something graver you are thinking."

"I think, sir, that it is not right to rob anybody of anything, and I
reflect that absolute righteousness is a fine feather in one's cap."

Then Manuel went into the chicken-yard behind the red-roofed palace of
King Ferdinand, and caught a goose, and plucked from its wing a feather.
Thereafter the florid young Count of Poictesme rode east, on a tall
dappled horse, and a retinue of six lackeys in silver and black liveries
came cantering after him, and the two foremost lackeys carried in
knapsacks, marked with a gold coronet, the images which Dom Manuel had
made. A third lackey carried Dom Manuel's shield, upon which were
emblazoned the arms of Poictesme. The black shield displayed a silver
stallion which was rampant in every member and was bridled with gold,
but the ancient arms had been given a new motto.

"What means this Greek?" Dom Manuel had asked.

"_Mundus decipit_, Count," they told him, "is the old pious motto of
Poictesme: it signifies that the affairs of this world are a vain
fleeting show, and that terrestrial appearances are nowhere of any
particular importance."

"Then your motto is green inexperience," said Manuel, "and for me to
bear it would be black ingratitude."

So the writing had been changed in accordance with his instructions, and
it now read _Mundus vult decipi_.

[Illustration]

IX

The Feather of Love

In such estate it was that Count Manuel came, on Christmas morning, just
two days after Manuel was twenty-one, into Provence. This land, reputed
sorcerous, in no way displayed to him any unusual features, though it
was noticeable that the King's marmoreal palace was fenced with silver
pikes whereon were set the embalmed heads of young men who had wooed the
Princess Alianora unsuccessfully. Manuel's lackeys did not at first like
the looks of these heads, and said they were unsuitable for Christma