THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
in large characters, and she was no less than The Muse of Gwent. Here was a chemist's laboratory, wherein a man of savage and starved countenance and tattered vestments stirred a great furnace, for he was Extracting Fifth Essence; and to cut short the last picture Payne saw was entitled The Manour Perpetual—a sheltered, wooded valley; a place of lawns, and quiet waters and tall blossoming hedges, beneath which lay men who seemed to rest at last. But these devices I have named are not the tenth part of them that he beheld on the walls of the dim passage; so that when he had gazed upon them all and the way began to mount again, he was weary and was fain to dout his light and lie down to sleep. How long he slept I know not, but when he awoke he lit again his taper, and joyfully remembering the sausage fell upon it with a will, drinking a little out of a cordial flask he had about him. This refreshment gave Payne courage for the upward journey; though to be sure he had to drain his flask before his mounting was done, for it seemed to be without end. Now he turned to right and now to left; now went round and round as in a tower, till at last to his joy he heard a voice close to him, and what is more, a voice somewhat familiar and dear; for it was Alianor's. Then with his candle he viewed the wall to search for an escape, and presently came to a wood panel with a boss of wood in the midst of it. And he listened again and heard that it was Alianor and her maid who talked; and then once more came from his lips the song Soubz cest amour
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