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How now! what means this intrusion?" He spoke to the dwarf Nectabanus, who rushed into the tent fearfully agitated, with each strange and disproportioned feature wrenched by horror into still more extravagant ugliness his mouth open, his eyes staring, his hands, with their shrivelled and deformed fingers, wildly expanded. "What now?" said the Soldan sternly. "ACCIPE HOC!" groaned out the dwarf.
"It shall suffice," said Nectabanus, "so that you presently attend me to the presence of those who have sent me hither to summon you." "Great sir," replied the knight, "neither in this can I gratify thee, for my orders are to abide by this banner till daybreak so I pray you to hold me excused in that matter also."
"But to yonder pavilion; and, since you must needs know," replied Nectabanus, "the moon is glimmering on the gilded ball which crowns its roof, and which is worth a king's ransom." "I can return in an instant," said the knight, shutting his eyes desperately to all further consequences, "I can hear from thence the bay of my dog if any one approaches the standard.
A wild and improbable conjecture arose in the knight's mind, but he repelled it. It was impossible, he thought, that the lady of his love should have sent him such a message by such a messenger; yet his voice trembled as he said, "Go to, Nectabanus.
"If the sage and princely Nectabanus be not over-jealous of his most transcendent bride and empress, let us send her to get us rid of this insolent knight-errant, who can be so easily persuaded that high-born dames may need the use of his insolent and overweening valour."
"Tell me," he said to the dwarf, "is my presence required for any length of time?" "Time!" answered Nectabanus, in his flighty manner; "what call you time? I see it not I feel it not it is but a shadowy name a succession of breathings measured forth by night by the clank of a bell, by day by a shadow crossing along a dial-stone.
He is, I warrant, but lying perdu in some neighbouring tent." "By my crown of lilies, and my sceptre of a specially good water-reed," said Nectabanus, "your Majesty is mistaken, He is nearer at hand than you wot he lieth ensconced there behind that canvas partition." "And within hearing of each word we have said!" exclaimed the Queen, in her turn violently surprised and agitated.
Nectabanus was both frightened and angry; but he had felt himself as completely in the power of the robust knight as an owl in the claws of an eagle, and therefore cared not to provoke him to any further display of his strength.
"Out, monster of folly and malignity!" As she uttered these words, Nectabanus fled from the pavilion with a yell of such a nature as leaves it still doubtful whether Berengaria had confined her rebuke to words, or added some more emphatic expression of her displeasure. "What can now be done?" said the Queen to Edith, in a whisper of undisguised uneasiness. "That which must," said Edith firmly.
There were but two ways of conquering the obstinacy of Nectabanus, who, as he spoke, diminished his walk into a snail's pace. For bribes Sir Kenneth had no means for soothing no time; so in his impatience he snatched the dwarf up from the ground, and bearing him along, notwithstanding his entreaties and his fear, reached nearly to the pavilion pointed out as that of the Queen.
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