Meanwhile he
persuaded me to ride back with him to one of his estates, a palace
above the valley of the Taravo.
"I know not why, but ever the vow of Jephthah comes to my mind as I
remember how we rode up the valley to Count Ugo's house in the hour
before sunset. 'And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with
timbrels and with dances, and she was his only child.' He had made
no vow and was incapable, poor man, of keeping any so heroic; and she
came out with no timbrel or dance, but soberly enough in her
sad-coloured dress of the people. Yet she came out while we rode a
good mile off, and waited for us as we climbed the last slope, and
she was his only child.
"How shall I tell you of her? She helped my purpose nothing, for at
first she was vehemently opposed to her father's consenting to be
king. Her politics she derived in part from the reading of
Plutarch's Lives and in part from her own simplicity. They were
childish, utterly: yet they put me to shame, for they glowed with the
purest love of her country. She has walked on fiery ploughshares
since then; she has trodden the furnace, and her beautiful bare feet
are seared since they trod the cool vintage with me on the slopes
above the Taravo.
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