that
only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven."

Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in
my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many
peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no
unhandsome bribes--bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too,
is wiser than we are."

They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the
morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man
shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said,
"for throughout I am all filth!"

Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my
only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to
his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the
chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may
die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!"

Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it.
"God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and
greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and
by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones
were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing
against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my
doom."

"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court
and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any
name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to
bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare
adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you
and I."

Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of
innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable
sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has
many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no
revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable
charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase.
To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely
thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly
conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to
tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which--But I
tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of
the Caesars, I bid