ss upset already--"

"I perceive you are still inventing excuses, Count Manuel, to put off
yielding entire allegiance to my sister."

"No, it is not that, not that at all! It is only the upset condition of
things, just now, and, besides, Hinzelmann, the stork is to bring us the
last girl child the latter part of next week. We are to call her
Ettarre, and I would like to have a sight of her, of course--In fact, I
am compelled to stay through mere civility, inasmuch as the Queen of
Philistia is sending the very famous St. Holmendis especially to
christen this baby. And it would be, Hinzelmann, the height of rudeness
for me to be leaving home, just now, as though I wanted to avoid his
visit--"

Hinzelmann still smiled rather sadly. "Last month you could not come to
us because your wife was just then outworn with standing in the hot
kitchen and stewing jams and marmalades. Dom Manuel, will you come when
the baby is delivered and this Saint has been attended to and all the
crops are in?"

"Well, but Hinzelmann, within a week or two we shall be brewing this
year's ale, and I have always more or less seen to that--"

Still Hinzelmann smiled sadly. He pointed with his small gloved hand
toward Melicent. "And what about your other enslavement, to this child
here?"

"Why, certainly, Hinzelmann, the brat does need a father to look out for
her, so long as she is the merest baby. And naturally, I have been
thinking about that of late, rather seriously--"

Hinzelmann spoke with deliberation. "She is very nearly the most stupid
and the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you must
remember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well as to Suskind."

But Dom Manuel was not provoked. "As if I did not know the child is in
no way remarkable! No, my good Hinzelmann, you that serve Suskind have
shown me strange dear things, but nothing more strange and dear than a
thing which I discovered for myself. For I am that Manuel whom men call
the Redeemer of Poictesme, and my deeds will be the themes of harpers
whose grandparents are not yet born; I have known love and war and all
manner of adventure: but all the sighings and hushed laughter of
yesterday, and all the trumpet-blowing and shouting, and all that I have
witnessed of the unreticent fond human ways of great persons who for the
while have put aside their state, and all the good that in my day I may
have done, and all the evil that I have certainly destroyed,--all this