THE IDYLL OF THE CARP (The SCENE is in a garden,-where you please, I feed them daily here at morn and night (Throwing bread.) Make haste, Messieurs! Make haste, then! Hurry. See,— See how they swim! confess, Would you not say, Some crowd of Courtiers in the audience hall, When the King comes? DENISE. You're jesting! THE PRINCESS. Not at all. Watch but the great one yonder! There's the Duke ; Those gill-marks mean his Order of St. Luke; Those old skin-stains his boasted quarterings. Look what a swirl and roll of tide he brings; Have you not marked him thus, with crest in air, Breathing disdain, descend the palace-stair? You surely have, DENISE DENISE. I think I have. But there's another, older and more grave,— The one that wears the round patch on the throat, And swims with such slow fins. Is he of note? THE PRINCESS. Why that's my good chambellan-with his seal. Equips my sweet-pouch, brings me morning flowers, Or chirrups madrigals with old, sweet words, Such as men loved when people wooed like birds And spoke the true note first. No suitor he, Yet loves me too,-though in a graybeard's key. DENISE. Look, Madam, look !—a fish without a stain ! O speckless, fleckless fish! Who is it, pray, That bears him so discreetly? THE PRINCESS. FONTENAY. You know him not? My prince of shining locks! My pearl !—my Phoenix!-my pomander-box! DENISE. Ai! what a splash! Who is it comes with such a sudden dash Plump i' the midst, and leaps the others clear? THE PRINCESS. Ho! for a trumpet! Let the bells be rung! DENISE. I'd rather wear E'en such a pinched and melancholy air, As his, that motley one, — who keeps the wall, And hugs his own lean thoughts for carnival. THE PRINCESS. My frankest wooer! Thus his love he tells As Cowards War,-as young Maids Constancy. Item, he loves me as the Hawk the Dove; He loves me as the Inquisition Thought! DENISE. "He loves?-he loves?" Why all this loving's naught ! THE PRINCESS. And "Naught (quoth JACQUOT) makes the sum of Love!" DENISE. The cynic knave! How call you this one here? This small shy-looking fish, that hovers near, And circles, like a cat around a cage, To snatch the surplus. THE PRINCESS. CHERUBIN, the page. 'Tis but a child, yet with that roguish smile, And those sly looks, the child will make hearts ache Not five years hence, I prophesy. Meanwhile, |