GRISELDA 117 



bodies too, and strange ones. Love is less simple than you 

 think. That sphinx, Nature, sets each woman as a riddle. 

 Her lover must solve the problem or he dies. I thought of no 

 such matters when I found Griselda. Her peasant bodice clipt 

 the body of a queen. That body held a noble woman's soul. 

 Body and soul matched mine ; and I claimed my mate. 



Tanc. My lord, you seem even now to speak of her with 

 triumph. 



Marq. Seem ! You think much of Grisyld. I made her. 

 You owe her to me. 



Tanc. Do we owe the martyr to the hangman ? 



Marq. That tongue-thrust was well put in ; but your weapon 

 galls me not, for your point lacks truth. You owe Grisyld to 

 me, for I am the man who saw the girl had stuff in her to make 

 a queen. As queen she was perfect, but as woman she was 

 incomplete. I felt alone when I was with her she was not 

 open with me. She never spoke of herself, never asked me of 

 myself; never wondered why one day I was moody and another 

 in good heart. She would as soon have questioned why the 

 breeze blew yesterday and not to-day. She seemed not a 

 woman, but a plant. I was not a man for her. I was the sun, 

 and when I shone she lifted up her head. 



Tanc. Put shortly, goodness wearied you. 



Marq. Far from it ; her calm excited me. I made my wife 

 my idol : she became a statue. I would have strained her warm 

 and living to my breast, and I found her marble. My arms 

 slipped from the smooth cold stone chilled, powerless. Anger 

 gave me heat and strength again; I cast down I broke my 

 idol, and I was left without a god. 



Tanc. You killed your children to see if their mother had a 

 heart. 



Marq. I killed no children. A palace is no place for the 

 young, and I therefore sent my boy and girl to Tuscany, where 

 they might grow in the open air. When I took the children 

 from her, Grisyld was still marble. My anger said that her 

 patience might be mere plebeian dulness, and I told her I had 

 killed them ; I set a strange problem : What was her duty ? 

 To abhor me ? or still to love and honour me ? 



Tanc. Her duty was to loathe you. 



