"
I ate because I was ravenously hungry, but also because, while eating,
I was better at my ease.
Suddenly out of the stillness, like an arrow, Safte was gone; and far
away beneath the motionless leaves a faint voice rang dwindling into
silence. I shuddered at my probable fate.
Prince Ennui glanced lightly. "When the magic horn at last resounds,"
he said, "how strange a flight it will be! These thorny briers
encroach ever nearer on my palace walls. I am a captive ever less at
ease. Summer by summer the sun rises shorn yet closer of his beams,
and now the lingering transit of the moon is but from one wood by a
narrow crystal arch to another. They will have me yet, sir. How weary
will the sleepy ones be of my uneasy footfall!"
And even as Safte slipped softly back to his watching mate, the patter
and shrill menace of voices behind him hinted not all was concord
between these hidden multitudes and their unseemly prince.
The master-stars shone earlier here; already sparkling above the tower
was a canopy of clearest darkness spread, while the leafy fringes of
the sky glowed yet with changing fires.
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