He pointed with his small gloved hand
toward Melicent. "And what about your other enslavement, to this child
here?"
"Why, certainly, Hinzelmann, the brat does need a father to look out for
her, so long as she is the merest baby. And naturally, I have been
thinking about that of late, rather seriously--"
Hinzelmann spoke with deliberation. "She is very nearly the most stupid
and the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you must
remember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well as to Suskind."
But Dom Manuel was not provoked. "As if I did not know the child is in
no way remarkable! No, my good Hinzelmann, you that serve Suskind have
shown me strange dear things, but nothing more strange and dear than a
thing which I discovered for myself. For I am that Manuel whom men call
the Redeemer of Poictesme, and my deeds will be the themes of harpers
whose grandparents are not yet born; I have known love and war and all
manner of adventure: but all the sighings and hushed laughter of
yesterday, and all the trumpet-blowing and shouting, and all that I have
witnessed of the unreticent fond human ways of great persons who for the
while have put aside their state, and all the good that in my day I may
have done, and all the evil that I have certainly destroyed,--all this
seems trivial as set against the producing of this tousled brat.
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