"You will only end by making yourself ill!" says Manuel.
Niafer continued to weep.
"My mind is quite made up," says Manuel, "so what, in God's name, is the
good of this?"
Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big champion sat
looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He viciously kicked at
the heavy glistening green head of the dragon, still bleeding uglily
there at his feet, but that did no good whatever. The dragon-queller was
beaten. He could do nothing against such moisture, his resolution was
dampened and his independence was washed away by this salt flood. And
they say too that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of
quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he acknowledged.
"Very well, then," Manuel says, by and by, "let us cross the Loir, and
ride south to look for our infernal coronet with the rubies in it, and
for your servants, and for some of your palaces."
So in the Christmas holidays they bring a tall burly squinting
gray-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the royal
palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo and his
goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on Wednesdays and
Saturdays.
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