liudmila511: переводы

→Anthony, with a considerable armed following out of Guelders, had been one of the allies who had lately fought on the Burgundian side in the War of the Public Weal, a war undertaken on the knightly grounds of abolishing extortionate taxation and setting free from its intolerable burden the "poor oppressed people of France." Because deceived by this pretext, Anthony's disillusion was the greater when the true aims of that war of rapacity became apparent. Burgundy's sole interest in that rebellion of the French vassals against their King was the retention of Picardy and the cities of the Somme, which the crafty Louis was scheming to restore to the Crown of France, to which they rightly belonged.

→To be sure there were still joustings to be witnessed; but these were no longer of more significance than tennis or hawking or any other of the exercises in which nobility sought amusement. The language of chivalry still continued to be employed; but the meaning of its terms had changed. Great orders of chivalry still existed, of which perhaps the greatest was the Golden Fleece, which the late Duke Philip had founded, and of which Anthony himself wore the coveted collar. But when that same collar was hung about the neck of the twenty days' old Charles, a blow was struck at the very foundations of an institution which demanded that knighthood should be the acquisition of personal merit alone, to be attained only after a long and arduous physical and spiritual novitiate.

→From his casement he watched the early dawn breaking over the park and giving form to its dark mass; and he pursued his dream of that world of reality, the promised land towards which he was to set his feet.

→Alone, Count Anthony turned to the night again, and questioned the darkling heavens upon reality. It must exist somewhere behind this shadowy phantasmagoria of a court, which obscured it precisely as the mists below obscured the park. Let him seek this reality, and, if found, be lost in it.

→But the slamming of the door was his only answer.

→On that threat, for it amounted to no less, the Duke was gone. Count Anthony raised his voice to call after him: "Good night, Charles!"

→"I commend you to consider well your position between this and then."

→"To-morrow!" said Count Anthony in the dreamy accents of one who questions Fate. "To-morrow?"

→The veins of the Duke's brow stood out congested. For a moment he looked as if he would strike his cousin. Then he mastered himself.

→"Let the lady announce that she has changed her mind. Let there be reasons of state why each of us should wed elsewhere."

→"Think of it no more!" The Duke was flung from rage to rage. "You are publicly betrothed."

→But Count Anthony went on relentlessly. "Am I to marry that, and have perhaps other men hereafter making free with one who, in her wantonness and vanity and greed of admiration, does not know where to place the barriers of reserve? And this to consolidate the alliance between Burgundy and Guelders. Our alliance Charles is firm enough without that. So think of it no more."

→"Why, here is jealousy--jealousy that will magnify a woman's hair into a rope! Bah!"

→"You saw how they played with each other, and that in public. You saw his hand, his foul, lascivious paw, on her bare shoulder. Do you not guess the prurient itch in those vile fingers, soiling her very soul with their touch? And you saw him whisper. Did you mark his eyes when he whispered?"

→"A wanton!"

→"A prudent conduct to dissemble a wanton heart! Fine linen over a festering sore! Catherine is in soul a wanton, and I desire no wanton for my wife."

→"Armagnac is going. Catharine shall hear two words from me on the score of prudence which she'll remember."

→Upon this the Duke disdained to argue. He struck directly at the heart of the matter.

→"You have insanity."

→"So does Burgundy," snapped the Duke. "But you'll be Duke of Guelders one day."