"
All being agreed, the Yule-log was stirred up into a blaze, which was
duly fed with the goose-feather and the robe of the Apsarasas.
Thereafter the trumpets sounded a fanfare, to proclaim that Raymond
Berenger's collops were cooked and peppered, his wine casks broached,
and his puddings steaming. Then the former swineherd went in to share
his Christmas dinner with the King-Count's daughter, Alianora, whom
people everywhere had called the Unattainable Princess.
And they relate that while Alianora and Manuel sat cosily in the hood of
the fireplace and cracked walnuts, and in the pauses of their talking
noted how the snow was drifting by the windows, the ghost of Niafer went
restlessly about green fields beneath an ever radiant sky in the
paradise of the pagans. When the kindly great-browed warders asked her
what it was she was seeking, the troubled spirit could not tell them,
for Niafer had tasted Lethe, and had forgotten Dom Manuel. Only her love
for him had not been forgotten, because that love had become a part of
her, and so lived on as a blind longing and as a desire which did not
know its aim.
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