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Updated: July 1, 2025
"Queer things have befallen me," said Manuel, "but nothing more strange than this can ever happen, than that I should be standing here with you, and holding this small hand in mine. You are not perhaps quite so beautiful nor so clever as Niafer. Nevertheless, you are the Unattainable Princess, whose loveliness recalled me from vain grieving after Niafer, within a half-hour of Niafer's loss.
"She will be a woman by and by," the strange boy said, with a soft and delicate voice, "and then she too will be coming to us, and we will provide fine sorrows for her." "No, Hinzelmann," Count Manuel replied, as he stroked the round straw-colored head of little Melicent. "This is the child of Niafer. She comes of a race that has no time to be peering out of dubious windows."
Now some while after Niafer was asleep, and when the night was fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. Manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas.
"Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not possibly re-conquer all Poictesme this afternoon ." "Oh!" says Manuel. "No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get troops to help you, both horse and foot." "My dearest, I only meant " " Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill off all the Northmen." "Niafer, will you let me explain "
"Come, Niafer, you are not handsome to look at, but you are far cleverer than I thought you!" Now, as Manuel clapped Niafer on the shoulder, the forest beside the roadway was agitated, and the underbrush crackled, and the tall beech-trees crashed and snapped and tumbled helter-skelter. The crust of the earth was thus broken through by the Serpent of the North.
I see my fond wife Niafer as a plain-featured and dull woman, not in any way remarkable among the millions of such women as are at this moment preparing breakfast or fretting over other small tasks. I see my newborn child as a mewing lump of flesh.
Niafer looked up from the marmalade with which she was finishing off her supper, to ask placidly, "And what does that dear yellow-haired friend of yours want with you now?" "My dear, if I knew the answer to that question it would not be necessary for me to travel oversea."
They went upstairs together, into the room with scarlet hangings, and to the golden bed where, with seven sorts of fruit properly arranged at the bedside, Dom Manuel's wife Niafer lay asleep. Manuel drew his dagger. Niafer turned in her sleep, so that she seemed to offer her round small throat to the raised knife.
"I have forgotten not one line or curve of your features," says Manuel, stoutly, "in all these months, nor in any of these last days that have passed as years. And when my love spurred me to make your image, Niafer, my love loaned me unwonted cunning.
She was still used to speak continually of what was becoming to people of our station in life, but it was with a large difference; and she got on with Niafer as well as could be expected, but no better.
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