Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/247

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3. Now everyone will judge what my state of mind was when I heard this speech (which I had not expected). For I now fully understood that I had been brought here for judgment. Therefore was I afeard; and yet more so when I saw lying beneath the throne of the queen a terrible beast (whether it was a dog or a lynx, or some dragon, I do not well know); and when I saw that it looked at me with sparkling eyes, I clearly saw that it required little to incite it against me. There stood there also two soldiers in mail, bodyguards of the queen; they were indeed in female attire, but terrible to behold, particularly the one who stood at the left. For he wore an iron coat of mail, prickly as a hedgehog (and even to touch it, I saw, was dangerous); on his hands and feet he had steely claws; in one hand he held a spear and a sword, in the other arrows and fire-arms. The second guard seemed to me laughable rather than terrible; for instead of a coat of mail, he wore the skin of a fox turned inward out; instead of a halberd he carried the brush of a fox, and in the left hand he held a nut-twig which he rattled.

4. Now when my interpreter (or rather, if I may say so, traitor) had finished his discourse, the queen