NOW Guivric and Donander and Gonfal rode westward with their attendants, all in one company, as far as Guivric’s home at Asch. And as these three lords rode among the wreckage and the gathering fogs of November, the three talked together.

“It is a pity,” said Gonfal of Naimes, “that, while our little Count Emmerick is growing up, this land must now be ruled by a lame and sallow person, who had never much wit and who tends already to stringiness. Otherwise, in a land ruled over by a widow, who is used to certain recreations, one might be finding amusement, and profit too.”

“Come now,” said loyal Donander of Évre, “but Madame Niafer is a chaste and good woman who means well!”

“She has yet another quality which is even more disastrous in the ruler of any country,” returned Guivric the Sage.

“And what hook have you found now to hang a cynicism on?”

“I fear more from her inordinate piety than from 22her indifferent looks and her stupid well-meaningness. That woman will be reforming things everywhere into one gray ruin.”

22

“Indeed,” said Gonfal, smiling, “these rising fogs have to me very much the appearance of church incense.”

Guivric nodded. “Yes. Had it been possible, I believe that Madame Niafer would have preserved and desecrated the fellowship by setting in Dom Manuel’s place that Holy Holmendis who is nowadays her guide in all spiritual matters; and who will presently, do you mark my prophesying, be making a sanctimonious hash of her statecraft.”

“He composed for her, it is well known,” said Gonfal, “the plaint which she made for Dom Manuel.”

“That was a cataloguing of ecclesiastic virtues,” Guivric said, dryly, “which to my mind did not very immediately suggest the tall adulterer and parricide whom we remember. This Holmendis has, thus, already brought hypocrisy into fashion.”

“He will be Niafer’s main counselor,” Gonfal speculated. “He is a pushing, vigorous fellow. I wonder now—?”

Guivric nodded again. “Women prefer to take counsel in a bedchamber,” he stated.

“Come, Guivric,” put in pious young Donander of Évre. “Come now, whatever his over-charitable opinion of our dead master, this Holmendis is 

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