oice of
Hinzelmann: "for it was she that would have loved you, Manuel, with that
love of which youth dreams, and which exists nowhere upon your side of
the window, where all kissed women turn to stupid figures of warm earth,
and all love falls away with age into the acquiescence of beasts."

"Oh, it is very true," says Manuel, "that all my life henceforward will
be a wearying business because of long desires for Suskind's love and
Suskind's lips and the grave beauty of her youth, and for all the
high-hearted dissatisfactions of youth. But the Alf charm is lifted from
the head of my child, and Melicent will live as Niafer lives, and it
will be better for all of us, and I am content."

From below came many voices wailing confusedly. "We weep for Suskind.
Suskind is slain with the one weapon that might slay her: and all we
weep for Suskind, who was the fairest and the wisest and the most
unreasonable of queens. Let all the Hidden Children weep for Suskind,
whose heart and life was April, and who plotted courageously against the
orderings of unimaginative gods, and who has been butchered to preserve
the hair of a quite ordinary child."

Then said the Count of Poictesme: "And that young Manuel who was in his
day a wilful champion, and who fretted under ordered wrongs, and who
went everywhither with a high head a-boasting that he followed after his
own thinking and his own desire,--why, that young fellow also is now
silenced and dead. For the well-thought-of Count of Poictesme must be as
the will and the faith and as the need of others may dictate: and there
is no help for it, and no escape, and our old appearances must be
preserved upon this side of the window in order that we may all stay
sane."

"We weep, and with long weeping raise the dirge for Suskind--!"

"But I, who do not weep,--I raise the dirge for Manuel. For I must
henceforward be reasonable in all things, and I shall never be quite
discontented any more: and I must feed and sleep as the beasts do, and
it may be that I shall even fall to thinking complacently about my death
and glorious resurrection. Yes, yes, all this is certain, and I may not
ever go a-traveling everywhither to see the ends of this world and judge
them: and the desire to do so no longer moves in me, for there is a
cloud about my goings, and there is a whispering which follows me, and I
too fall away into the acquiescence of beasts. Meanwhile no hair of the
child's head has been injured, an