"I honour him for his fidelity. But, your only champion? Where was the chivalry of the world, to leave such a post to a dog?"
"Where! In idle vows and poets' dreams, I imagine; its only home in any time, most likely. The Ritter Tannhäuser swore his knightly homage in the Venusberg, but ere long he turned on her who gave him his delight:
"O Venus schöne Fraue mein,
Ihr seyd eine Teufelinne!"
The German legend is very typical!"
"Tannhäuser was a cur!" said Erceldoune, with an eloquent warmth in his voice rather than in his words. "What matter what she was—what matter whence she came—she was the sovereign of his life; she had given him love, and glory, and delight; she was his. It was enough—enough to lose a world for, and to hold it well lost!"
He paused suddenly in the passionate poetic impulse on which he spoke, which had broken up in bis heart for the first time, utterly alien as he believed to his nature, to his temperament, to his will. It was of her and of himself that he thought, not of the old Teutonic Minnesinger's legend of Tannhäuser: and the rich glow of the sunlight slanting across the mosaic pavement, shone in the
