was herself ready to die of grief and alarm at the sight. She had him carried into the handsomest room in the palace, where nothing was wanting that could be necessary for his recovery,—physicians from Chodrai,[1] surgeons, ointments, broths, syrups. The Infanta herself made the bandages and prepared the lint. They were watered with her tears; and those tears should alone have been a balsam to the wounded prince. They were so indeed in more ways than one, for not counting half-a-dozen sword-cuts, and as many lance-thrusts, which had pierced him through and through, he had long been at the court, incognito, and had been wounded by the bright eyes of Babiole so desperately, that he was incurable for life. It is easy, therefore, to imagine at present some portion of what he felt, when he was able to read in the countenance of that beautiful princess, that she was in the utmost grief at beholding the condition to which he was reduced.
I shall not stop to repeat all that his heart prompted him to say in thanking her for the kindness she had shown him. Those who heard him were astonished that a man so very ill could express himself with so much warmth and gratitude. The Infanta, who blushed more than once at his words, begged him to be silent, but his agitation and ardour carried him so far, that she saw him suddenly fall into an alarming agony. Up to this time she had evinced great fortitude, but now she lost it so completely that she tore her hair, uttered wild shrieks, and gave her people reason to believe that her heart was vastly susceptible, since she could in so short a time be so desperately in love with an utter stranger,—for little did they know in Babiola (she had so named her kingdom), that the prince was her cousin, and that she had loved him from her earliest infancy.
It was during his travels that he had arrived at this Court, and as there was no one he knew to present him to the Infanta, he thought that nothing could be better than performing five or six heroic actions before her, that is to say, cutting off the arms or legs of some of the knights in the lists; but he found none polite enough to permit him to do
- ↑ There is no Chodrai to be found in the Dictionnaire Universel Géographique de la France, 5 vols. 1804. Chaudray near Mantes, and Chaudrey on the Aube, are small towns which do not appear to have been distinguished in the annals of medicine.
