May my course be bright, if it be but brief!" "Alas! noble King," said the solitary, and it seemed as if a tear (unwonted guest) were gathering in his dry and glazened eye, "short and melancholy, marked with mortification, and calamity, and captivity, is the span that divides thee from the grave which yawns for thee--a grave in which thou shalt be laid without lineage to succeed thee--without the tears of a people, exhausted by thy ceaseless wars, to lament thee--without having extended the knowledge of thy subjects--without having done aught to enlarge their happiness." "But not without renown, monk--not without the tears of the lady of my love! These consolations, which thou canst neither know nor estimate, await upon Richard to his grave." "DO I not know, CAN I not estimate the value of minstrel's praise and of lady's love ?" retorted the hermit, in a tone which for a moment seemed to emulate the enthusiasm of Richard himself.

"King of England," he continued, extending his emaciated arm, "the blood which boils in thy blue veins is not more noble than that which stagnates in mine.

Few and cold as the drops are, they still are of the blood of the royal Lusignan--of the heroic and sainted Godfrey.

I am--that is, I was when in the world--Alberick Mortemar--" "Whose deeds," said Richard, "have so often filled Fame's trumpet! Is it so ?--can it be so?
Could such a light as thine fall from the horizon of chivalry, and yet men be uncertain where its embers had alighted ?" "Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, "and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly, which, in shooting through the horizon, has assumed for a moment an appearance of splendour.

Richard, if I thought that rending the bloody veil from my horrible fate could make thy proud heart stoop to the discipline of the church, I could find in my heart to tell thee a tale, which I have hitherto kept gnawing at my vitals in concealment, like the self-devoted youth of heathenesse.