'Pardieu,' said Gaston. 'I am with you, Richard, for I am in want. I have eaten nothing for two days.'
So they rode out of the woods of Saint-Pol-la-Marche, and Richard began to sing songs of Jehane the Fair-Girdled; never truly her lover until he might love her no more.
HOW BERTRAN DE BORN AND COUNT RICHARD STROVE IN A _TENZON_
Day-long and night-long he sang of her, being now in the poetic mood, highly exalted, out of himself. The country took tints of Jehane, her shape, her fine nobility. The thrust hills of the Vexin were her breasts; the woods, being hot gold, her russet hair; in still green water he read the secrets of her eyes; in the milk of October dawns her calm brows had been dipped. The level light of the Beauce, so beneficent yet so austere, figured her soul. Fair-girdled was Touraine by Vienne and Loire; fair-girdled Jehane, who wore virgin candour about her loins and over her heart a shield of blue ice. As far southwards as Tours the dithyrambic prevailed; Richard was untiring in the hunt for analogues. Thence on to Poictiers, where the country (being his own) was perhaps more familiar; indeed, while he was climbing the grey peaks of Montagrier with his goal almost in sight, he turned scholiast and glossed his former raptures.
'You are not to tell me, Gaston,' he declared, 'that my Jehane has been untrue. She was never more wholly mine than when she gave herself to that other, never loved me more dearly. Such power is given to women to lead this world. It is the power of the Word, who cut Himself off and made us His butchers in pure love. I shall do my part. I shall wed the French girl, who in my transports will never guess that in reality Jehane will be in my arms.' Tears filled his eyes. 'For we shall be wedded in the sight of heaven,' he said sighing.
'Deus!' cried Gaston here, 'Such marriages may be more to the taste of heaven than of men, Richard. Man is a creature of sense.'
'He hath a spiritual part,' said Richard, 'so rarely hidden that only the thin fingers of a girl may get in to touch it. Then, being touched, he knows that it is quick. Let me alone; I am not all mud nor all devil. I shall do my duty, marry the French girl, and love my golden Jehane until I die.'