"
Gisele turned now toward the magician, with her thin gold chains and the
innumerable brilliancies of her jewels flashing no more brightly than
flashed the sapphire of her eyes. "There!" she said, terribly: "and you
were going to surrender me to a swineherd, with half the hair chopped
from his head, and with the shirt sticking out of both his ragged
elbows!"
"My dearest, irrespective of tonsorial tastes, and disregarding all
sartorial niceties, and swineherd or not, he holds the magic sword
Flamberge, before which all my powers are nothing."
"But that is easily settled. Have men no sense whatever! Boy, do you
give me that sword, before you hurt yourself fiddling with it, and let
us have an end of this nonsense."
Thus the proud lady spoke, and for a while the victorious champion
regarded her with very youthful looking, hurt eyes. But he was not
routed.
"Madame Gisele," replied Manuel, "gawky and poorly clad and young as I
may be, so long as I retain this sword I am master of you all and of the
future too. Yielding it, I yield everything my elders have taught me to
prize, for my grave elders have taught me that much wealth and broad
lands and a lovely wife are finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs.
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