"There should be three gifts," she said at last, "for so it always is in
Mere Bastienne's stories. I will have the shoes of silence, the girdle
of fortune, and diamonds from Norumbega. Tell me again about Norumbega."
"Nay, little one, I must go, to see after the lading of the ship. Fare
thee well for this time," and the young man bent his tall head above the
hand of his seven-year-old lady. The graceful, quick-witted and
imaginative child had been his pet and he her loyal servant these three
years. It was understood between them that she was really the Queen of
France, barred from her throne by the Salic Law that forbade any woman
to rule that country in her own right. Some day he was to discover for
her a kingdom beyond seas, in which she alone should reign. Of all the
tales, marvelous, fanciful or tragic, which he or her old nurse had told
her, she liked best the legend of Norumbega, the city in the wilderness
which no explorer had ever found. Wherever French, Breton or English
fishermen had become at all familiar with the Indians they heard of a
city great and populous, with walls of stone, ruled by a king richer
than any of their chiefs, but no two stories agreed on the location.
Some had heard that it was an island, west of Cape Breton; others that
it was on the bank of a great river to the southward.
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