Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

The woman entered, with her mangled child in her arms. She was pale

as her little burden. She gazed, with a wild love and despairing

tenderness, on the still, all but dead face, white and clear from loss

of blood and terror.

The knight rose. The light that had been confined to his eyes, now shone

from his whole countenance. He took the little thing in his arms, and,

with the mother's help, undressed her, and looked to her wounds. The

tears flowed down his face as he did so. With tender hands he bound them

up, kissed the pale cheek, and gave her back to her mother. When he went

home, all his tale would be of the grief and joy of the parents; while

to me, who had looked on, the gracious countenance of the armed man,

beaming from the panoply of steel, over the seemingly dead child, while

the powerful hands turned it and shifted it, and bound it, if possible

even more gently than the mother's, formed the centre of the story.

After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the knight took

his leave, with a few parting instructions to the mother as to how she

should treat the child.

I brought the knight his steed, held the stirrup while he mounted, and

then followed him through the wood. The horse, delighted to be free

of his hideous load, bounded beneath the weight of man and armour, and

could hardly be restrained from galloping on. But the knight made him

time his powers to mine, and so we went on for an hour or two. Then

the knight dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying:

"Knight and squire must share the labour."

Holding by the stirrup, he walked along by my side, heavily clad as he

was, with apparent ease. As we went, he led a conversation, in which I

took what humble part my sense of my condition would permit me.

"Somehow or other," said he, "notwithstanding the beauty of this country

of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it. If there

are great splendours, there are corresponding horrors; heights and

depths; beautiful women and awful fiends; noble men and weaklings. All

a man has to do, is to better what he can. And if he will settle it

with himself, that even renown and success are in themselves of no great

value, and be content to be defeated, if so be that the fault is not

his; and so go to his work with a cool brain and a strong will, he

will get it done; and fare none the worse in the end, that he was not

burdened with provision and precaution."