Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without asperity:
"Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ that God requires it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many occasions we have been commanded to live righteously. We are tempted in divers and insidious ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, 'My strength is dried up like a potsherd.' But God intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated our valor upon Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in God's army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may be tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not yield!"
"Again you preach," Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism."
"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?"
Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund," she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohimé! it is a pity that I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these two slept in Chantrell Wood.
Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear.
At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this child."
The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork. Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set afoot; trudging thus among the débris of these wars, she found they had unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked. There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen toiling behind.