'Your majesty,' he cried, 'a damsel in distress waits without.'
'I am Yvonne, the daughter of Earl Dorm of the Hills,' said the damsel,
What made him feel like a mild gentleman in a post-office who has asked the lady assistant if she will have time to attend to him soon and has caught her eye, was the fact that he thought he had observed the damsel Yvonne frown as he rose.
The moment he had caught a glimpse of the damsel Yvonne, he loved her devotedly.
'This is Sir Agravaine the Dolorous,' said the king to the damsel.
Ten minutes later Agravaine, still dazed, was jogging along to the hills, with the damsel by his side.
The damsel seemed preoccupied, and Agravaine's mind was a welter of confused thoughts, the most prominent of which and the one to which he kept returning being the startling reflection that he, who had pined for romance so long, had got it now in full measure.
Then he looked at the damsel, and his mind was made up.
'Behold!' said the damsel. 'My father's castle.' And presently they were riding across the drawbridge and through the great gate, which shut behind them with a clang.
This the finest air drinking, With nostrils out-swelled like goblets, Lacking future, lacking remembrances Thus do I sit here, ye Friendly
damsels dearly loved, And look at the palm-tree there, How it, to a dance-girl, like, Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob, --One doth it too, when one view'th it long!-- To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me, Too long, and dangerously persistent, Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood?
The landlord eyed him over but did not find him as good as Don Quixote said, nor even half as good; and putting him up in the stable, he returned to see what might be wanted by his guest, whom the
damsels, who had by this time made their peace with him, were now relieving of his armour.
During the festival, I had noticed several young females whose skins were almost as white as any Saxon
damsel's; a slight dash of the mantling brown being all that marked the difference.
"'The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,'--a morality, if you please,
damsel."
Knowest thou not there is a jealousy of ambition and of wealth, as well as of love; and that this our host, Front-de-B uf, will push from his road him who opposes his claim to the fair barony of Ivanhoe, as readily, eagerly, and unscrupulously, as if he were preferred to him by some blue-eyed damsel? But smile on my suit, lady, and the wounded champion shall have nothing to fear from Front-de-B uf, whom else thou mayst mourn for, as in the hands of one who has never shown compassion.''
If, thought he, I should be moved by the tears and sorrow of this disconsolate damsel, what should I reap but the loss of these fair hopes for which I have encountered so much risk, and the ridicule of Prince John and his jovial comrades?
