Master Porges waited, but waited in vain. He was pained. "What,
silence?" he whispered awfully. "What, contumacy? Stubborn refusal?
Sinking in sin? Can I believe my ears? Very good, prisoner, very good.
Melot, my bird of paradise, give your evidence."
This had effect. "I confess," said the accused (speaking for the first
time), "I am not a man."
"There now, there now," cried Master Porges in an ecstasy, "the
sleeper awakened! The conscience astir! Oh, infallible fount of
justice! Oh, crown of the generation of Adam too weighty for the
generation of Eve! Observe now, my loving friends, how beautiful the
rills of logic flowing from this stricken wretch. Let me deduce them
for you. As thus. A woman seeketh naturally a man: but this is a
woman; therefore she sought naturally a man. My friends, that is just
what she did. For she sought Messire Prosper le Gai, a lord, the
friend of ladies. Again. A man should cleave unto his wife: but
Messire le Gai is a man, therefore Messire should cleave unto his
wife. 'La, la!' one will say, 'but he hath no wife, owl!' and think to
lay me flat. Oh, wise fool, I reply, take another syllogism conceived
in this manner and double-tongued. It is not good for man to live
alone; neither is it good for a lady to live alone, who hath a great
estate and the cares of it: but Messire Prosper is that man, and her
ladyship is that lady; therefore they should marry; therefore Messire
Prosper should cleave unto her ladyship, and what the devil hath this
woman to do between a man and his wife now? Aha, I have you clean in a
fork. I have purposely omitted a few steps in my ladder of inference
to bring it home. Then, look, cometh crawling this accurséd. O
tempora, O Mores! O Pudor! O Saecula Saeculorum! What incontinency,
you will say; and I say, What, indeed! Then cometh fairly your turn.
Seneschal, you go on threatening me, this is a Christian castle under
a Christian lady, the laws whereof are fixed and stable so that no
man may blink them. I say, Aye. You go on to plead, noble seneschal
(say you), give us our laws lest we perish. I see the tears; I say, Aye.
The penalty of incontinency is well known to you; I say, Aye. It is just.
I bow my head. I say, Take your incontinent incontinently, and deal!"
Master Porges got off the table, and, ceasing to be a justice, became
a creature of his day. Now, his day was a wild one as his dwelling a
barbarous, where the remedy for most offences was a drubbing.
Isoult bowed her head, set her teeth hard, and bent to the storm. The
storm burst over her, shrilled, whistled, and swept her down. In her
unformulate creed Love was, sure enough, a lord of terrible aspect,
gluttonous of blood, in whose service nevertheless the blood-letter
should take delight. No flagellant scored his back more deeply nor
with braver heart than she her smitten side. It would appear that she
was a better Christian than she suspected, since she laid down her
life for her friend, and found therein her reward. And her reward was
this, that Prosper le Gai, the gallant fighter, remained for Melot and
her kind a demi-god in steel, while she, his wife, was adjudged to the
black ram. To the black ram she was strapped, face to the tail, and so
ran the gauntlet of the yelling host in the courtyard, and of the
Countess of Hauterive's chill gaze from the parvise. By this time she
had become a mere doll, poor wretch; and as there is no pleasure in a
love of justice which is not quickened by a sense of judgment, the
pursuers tired after the first mad bout. Some, indeed, found that they
had hurt themselves severely by excess of zeal. This was looked upon
as clear evidence of the devil's possession of a tail, in spite of the
Realists. For if he had not a tail, how could he injure those who
drove him out? This is unanswerable.