Promise me but one thing, that you will make no fierce or
desperate answer to the Duke."
"And why not answer the tanner as he deserves?"
"Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your fortunes and his are
linked together. I have studied my tables, but they would not answer. Then
I cast lots in Virgilius--"
"And what found you there?" asked he, anxiously.
"I opened at the lines,--
'Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis
Oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem.'"
"And what means that?"
"That you may have to pray him to pity the slain; and have for answer,
that their lands may be yours if you will but make peace with him. At
least, do not break hopelessly with that man. Above all, never use that
word concerning him which you used just now; the word which he never
forgives. Remember what he did to them of Alencon, when they hung raw
hides over the wall, and cried, 'Plenty of work for the tanner!'"
"Let him pick out the prisoners' eyes, and chop off their hands, and shoot
them into the town from mangonels,--he must go far and thrive well ere I
give him a chance of doing that by me."
"Hereward, Hereward, my own! Boast not, but fear God. Who knows, in such a
world as this, to what end we may come? Night after night I am haunted
with spectres, eyeless, handless--"
"This is cold comfort for a man just out of hard fighting in the
ague-fens!"
She threw her arms round him, and held him as if she would never let him
go.
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