leave." "Leave? To do what?" "Lady, I must go off to
Britain." "Then tell me what your business is, before I give you leave
to go." "Lady, my father, before he departed this life and died, begged
me not to fail to go to Britain as soon as I should be made a knight.
I should not wish for any reason to disregard his command. I must not
falter until I have accomplished the journey. It is a long road from
here to Greece, and if I should go thither, the journey would be too
long from Constantinople to Britain. But it is right that I should ask
leave from you to whom I altogether belong." Many a covert sigh and sob
marked the separation. But the eyes of none were keen enough, nor the
ears of any sharp enough, to learn from what he saw and heard that there
was any love between these two. Cliges, in spite of the grief he felt,
took his leave at the first opportunity. He is full of thought as he
goes away, and so are the emperor and many others who stay behind. But
more than all the others, Fenice is pensive: she finds no bottom or
bound to the reflections which occupy her, so abundantly are her cares
multiplied. She was still oppressed with thought when she arrived in
Greece. There she was held in great honour as mistress and empress; but
her heart and mind belong to Cliges, wherever he goes, and she wishes
her heart never to return to her, unless it is brought back to her by
him who is perishing of the same disease with which he has smitten her.
If he should get well, she would recover too, but he will never be its
victim without her being so as well. Her trouble appears in her pale and
changed colour; for the fresh, clear, and radiant colour which Nature
had given her is now a stranger to her face. She often weeps and often
sighs. Little she cares for her empire and for the riches that are hers.
She always cherishes in her remembrance the hour when Cliges went away,
and the leave he took of her, how he changed colour and grew pale, and
how tearful his expression was, for he came to weep in her presence
humbly and simply upon his knees, as if constrained to worship her.
All this is sweet and pleasant for her to remember and think about. And
afterward, as a little treat, she takes on her tongue instead of spice
a sweet word which for all Greece she would not wish him to have used
contrary to the sense she had understood when he first had uttered
it; for she lives upon no other dainty, and there is nothing else that
pleases her. T