cause.

XXVIII

And I listened, so utterly confounded by the very simplicity of her
apology, which overturned all my accusations, and put me in the wrong,
that I stood in silence, unable to find anything to say. And in my
stupefaction, I began to laugh. And I said: Ha! Nectar when she turns
towards thee: poison when she turns away! Hast thou never heard the
Queen's verse? And she said: What! wilt thou actually lay on me the
burden of refuting the silly slander of a rhyme, circulated by little
rascals merely for want of something else to say? Can I help what they
say, or shall I even stoop to listen when they say it, who will say
anything of queens, without shame for the envious venom of their own
base insignificance, knowing all the time absolutely nothing, but
making mere noise, like frogs all croaking together in a marsh? Or if
I must absolutely answer, in spite of my disdain, how can I prevent
any lover, such as thyself, from persuading himself of what he wishes
to believe? For all of them resemble thee, behaving like unreasonable
bulls, the very moment that they see me, and pestering me like flies,
to my torment, and yet would blame me for driving them away. And every
one of them, exactly like thee, imagines me his own, for no reason
that I am ever able to discover, although I tell them all, exactly as
I told thee, that I belong to Narasinha.

And I said in wrath: I will slice off the head of Narasinha, by and
by, as I have done already for some of his tools. And I will not be
the plaything of a moment, to be cast aside the next. I have lost a
kingdom for thy sake, and will have thee to repay me, whether thou
wilt or no. And she said with a smile: Thou art angry, and talking
nonsense in thy anger, as angry men will. Dost thou not see that thou
art bereft of thy senses? For, kingdom or no kingdom, how canst thou
be so silly as to propose to force me, willy nilly, to love thee when
I do not love? If I loved thee, I should say so, and all force would
be superfluous: if not, it would be not only useless, but injurious to
thy own cause, seeing that the more thou forcest, the less wilt thou
obtain: nay, whereas now thou art indifferent, thou wilt bring it
about that I shall hate thee in the end, as I am beginning to do a
very little even now. And then it will be worse for thee in every way.
For thou dost not seem ever to remember that I am, after all, not only
a woman, but a queen.

And I looked at her as she spoke