Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/138



Speaking for some tway turnings of the horloge in a voice of grave sweetness that drew all eyes intent upon him. In this history he told them how he had lost his way in a vast forest, where he was beset by the folk of Færie, who played him a thousand tricks and bewildered his sight and mind and all his rational faculties with their enchantments, showing him the sweet unearthly bodies of ladies lying asleep beneath the trees, and sending dwarfs to waylay him and draw him aside from his track. Nevertheless through all these magic meshes he won through, and at last reached a flat land on the summit of a mountain, where he found the people celebrating the Festival of Wine Skins, with songs and music and interludes and many pleasant diversions, but there was nothing like Constancy to be met with among them in love or in anything else. Thence Sir Nicholas went down to the valley beyond, and saw in the midst thereof a great city on a hill, having a spire rising from it of incredible height that seemed to sway to and fro from star to star. And the hill whereon the city stood was so steep that no horse nor mule might mount it, and the only way for a man to ascend was by way of four stout and well-set ladders, made of ropes, one on each side of the city. "So," said the Knight, "I was