"
"Once, Manuel, you feared to travel with me, and you bid Niafer mount in
your stead on my black horse, saying, 'Better she than I.'"
"Yes, yes, what curious things we do when we are boys! Well, I am wiser
now, for since then I have achieved all that I desired, save only to see
the ends of this world and to judge them, and I would have achieved that
too, perhaps, if only I had desired it a little more heartily. Yes, yes,
I tell you frankly, I have grown so used to getting my desire that I
believe, even now, if I desired you to go hence alone you also would
obey me."
Grandfather Death smiled thinly. "I reserve my own opinion. But take it
what you say is true,--and do you desire me to go hence alone?"
"No," says Manuel, very quietly.
Thereupon Dom Manuel passed to the western window, and he stood there,
looking out over broad rolling uplands. He viewed a noble country, good
to live in, rich with grain and metal, embowered with tall forests, and
watered by pleasant streams. Walled cities it had, and castles crowned
its eminences. Very far beneath Dom Manuel the leaded roofs of his
fortresses glittered in the sunset, for Storisende guarded the loftiest
part of all inhabited Poictesme.
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