“Lord God of heaven and earth, now at last I
know what the love of woman is. Let my wife learn
of me the love of an honest man. And to that
end, Father of heaven, suffer me to be made a man.
Per Christum Dominum,” etc.
At the end of his prayer he knelt on, and what drove
in his brain I know not at all. The unutterable
devotion of that meek and humble creature who called
him master and lord, who had lain by his side, walked
at his heels, sat at his knee, served at his table,
put his foot to her neck (she so high in grace, he
so shameless in brute strength!), bowed to a yoke,
endured scorn, shame, bleeding, stripes, blindness,
and the swoon like death—all this was something
beyond thought: it was piercingly sweet, but
it beat him down as a breath of flame. He fell
flat on his face upon the black fern and blood, and
so stayed crying like a boy.
When he got up he buckled on his helm, mounted, and
rode straight for Goltres.
Master Porges knew an image-maker at March, and paid
him a visit. He caused to be made a little stone
figure of a lady, very beautiful, with a brass aureole
round her victorious head. She was depicted trampling
on a grinning knight—evidently the devil
in one of his many disguises, though as like Prosper
as description could provide. Underneath, on
the pedestal, ran the legend—Sancta Isolda
Dei Genetricis Ancilla Ora Pro Nobis. He
set this up in his chamber over a faldstool, and said
three Paters and nine Aves before it
daily. He reported that he derived unspeakable
comfort from the practice, and for my part I believe
that he did.
HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL
The charcoal-burner’s convoy, bearing at once
the evidence and the reward of his humanity, a battered
lady on one ass and her flayed friend on another,
jogged leisurely through the forest glades. The
time was the very top of spring, the morning soft and
fair, but none of the party took any heed: the
charcoal-burner because he was by habit too close
to these things, Isoult because she was in a faint,
the black ram because he had been skinned. When
Isoult did finally lift her head and begin to look
timidly about her, she found herself in a country
unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour’s
or a week’s journey from High March, where Prosper
was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing
step of the donkey took her further from him, but
she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce
whispered in her yet. And what span of miles
or hours, after all, could set her wider from him
than discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes,
had hounded her?
