The Project Gutenberg eBook, Figures of Earth, by James Branch Cabell,
Illustrated by Frank C. Pape

Figures of Earth

James Branch Cabell

A Comedy of Appearances

1921

Illustrated by Frank C. Papé

List of Illustrations

"He Was Drying Out In the
Sun"

"Summons the
Stork"

Contents

AUTHOR'S NOTE

A FOREWORD

PART ONE

THE BOOK OF CREDIT

CHAPTER

I HOW MANUEL LEFT THE MIRE

II NIAFER

III ASCENT OF VRAIDEX

IV IN THE DOUBTFUL PALACE

V THE ETERNAL AMBUSCADE

VI ECONOMICS OF MATH

VII THE CROWN OF WISDOM

VIII THE HALO OF
HOLINESS

IX THE FEATHER OF LOVE

PART TWO

THE BOOK OF SPENDING

X ALIANORA

XI MAGIC OF THE APSARASAS

XII ICE AND IRON

XIII  WHAT HELMAS
DIRECTED

XIV  THEY DUEL ON MORVEN

XV BANDAGES FOR THE
VICTOR

PART THREE

THE BOOK OF CAST ACCOUNTS

 XVI FREYDIS

XVII MAGIC OF THE
IMAGE-MAKERS

XVIII MANUEL CHOOSES

XIX  THE HEAD OF MISERY

XX  THE MONTH OF YEARS

XXI  TOUCHING REPAYMENT

XXII  RETURN OF NIAFER

XXIII  MANUEL GETS HIS
DESIRE

XXIV  THREE WOMEN

PART FOUR

THE BOOK OF SURCHARGE

XXV AFFAIRS IN POICTESME

XXVI  DEALS WITH THE
STORK

XXVII  THEY COME TO
SARGYLL

XXVIII  HOW MELICENT WAS
WELCOMED

XXIX  SESPHRA OF THE
DREAMS

XXX  FAREWELL TO FREYDIS

XXXI  STATECRAFT

XXXII  THE REDEMPTION OF
POICTESME

PART FIVE

THE BOOK OF SETTLEMENT

XXIII  NOW MANUEL
PROSPERS

XXXIV  FAREWELL TO
ALIANORA

XXXV  THE TROUBLING
WINDOW

XXXVI  EXCURSIONS FROM
CONTENT

XXXVII  OPINIONS OF
HINZELMANN

XXXVIII  FAREWELL TO
SUSKIND

XXXIX  THE PASSING OF
MANUEL

XL  COLOPHON: DA CAPO

To

SIX MOST GALLANT CHAMPIONS

Is dedicated this history of a champion: less to repay than to
acknowledge large debts to each of them, collectively at outset, as
hereafter seriatim.

Author's Note

Figures of Earth is, with some superficial air of paradox, the
one volume in the long Biography of Dom Manuel's life which deals
with Dom Manuel himself. Most of the matter strictly appropriate to
a Preface you may find, if you so elect, in the Foreword addressed
to Sinclair Lewis. And, in fact, after writing two prefaces to this
"Figures of Earth"—first, in this epistle to Lewis, and,
secondly, in the remarks ¹ affixed
to the illustrated edition,—I had thought this volume could
very well continue to survive as long as its deficiencies permit,
without the confection of a third preface, until I began a little
more carefully to consider this romance, in the seventh year of its
existence.

But now, now, the deficiency which I note in chief (like the
superior officer of a disastrously wrecked crew) lies in the fact
that what I had meant to be the main "point" of "Figures of Earth,"
while explicitly enough stated in the book, remains for every
practical end indiscernible.... For I have written many books
during the last quarter of a century. Yet this is the only one of
them which began at one plainly recognizable instant with one
plainly recognizable imagining. It is the only book by me which
ever, virtually, came into being, with its goal set, and with its
theme and its contents more or less pre-determined throughout,
between two ticks of the clock.

Egotism here becomes rather unavoidable. At Dumbarton Grange the
library in which I wrote for some twelve years was lighted by three
windows set side by side and opening outward. It was in the instant
of unclosing one of these windows, on a fine afternoon in the
spring of 1919, to speak with a woman and a child who were then
returning to the house (with the day's batch of mail from the post
office), that, for no reason at all, I reflected it would be, upon
every personal ground, regrettable if, as the moving window
unclosed, that especial woman and that particular child proved to
be figures in the glass, and the window opened upon nothingness.
For that, I believed, was about to happen. There would be, I knew,
revealed beyond that moving window, when it had opened all the way,
not absolute darkness, but a gray nothingness, rather sweetly
scented.... Well! there was not. I once more enjoyed the quite
familiar experience of being mistaken. It is gratifying to record
that nothing whatever came of that panic surmise, of that
second-long nightmare—of that brief but over-tropical
flowering, for all I know, of indigestion,—save, ultimately,
the 80,000 words or so of this book.

For I was already planning, vaguely, to begin on, later in that
year, "the book about Manuel." And now I had the germ of
it,—in the instant when Dom Manuel opens the over-familiar
window, in his own home, to see his wife and child, his lands, and
all the Poictesme of which he was at once the master and the main
glory, presented as bright, shallow, very fondly loved illusions in
the protective glass of Ageus. I knew that the fantastic thing
which had not happened to me,—nor, I hope, to
anybody,—was precisely the thing, and the most important
thing, which had happened to the gray Count of Poictesme.

So I made that evening a memorandum of that historical
circumstance; and for some months this book existed only in the
form of that memorandum. Then, through, as it were, this wholly
isolated window, I began to grope at "the book about
Manuel,"—of whom I had hitherto learned only, from my other
romances, who were his children, and who had been the sole witness
of Dom Manuel's death, inasmuch as I had read about that also, with
some interest, in the fourth chapter of "Jurgen"; and from the
unclosing of this window I developed "Figures of Earth," for the
most part toward, necessarily, anterior events. For it seemed to
me—as it still seems,—that the opening of this
particular magic casement, upon an outlook rather more perilous
than the bright foam of fairy seas, was alike the climax and the
main "point" of my book.

Yet this fact, I am resignedly sure, as I nowadays appraise this
seven-year-old romance, could not ever be detected by any reader of
"Figures of Earth," In consequence, it has seemed well here to
confess at some length the original conception of this volume,
without at all going into the value of that conception, nor into,
heaven knows, how this conception came so successfully to be
obscured.

So I began "the book about Manuel" that summer,—in 1919,
upon the back porch of our cottage at the Rockbridge Alum Springs,
whence, as I recall it, one could always, just as Manuel did upon
Upper Morven, regard the changing green and purple of the mountains
and the tall clouds trailing northward, and could observe that the
things one viewed were all gigantic and lovely and seemed not to be
very greatly bothering about humankind. I suppose, though, that, in
point of fact, it occasionally rained. In any case, upon that same
porch, as it happened, this book was finished in the summer of
1920.

And the notes made at this time as to "Figures of Earth" show
much that nowadays is wholly incomprehensible. There was once an
Olrun in the book; and I can recall clearly enough how her part in
the story was absorbed by two of the other characters,—by
Suskind and by Alianora. Freydis, it appears, was originally called
Hlif. Miramon at one stage of the book's being, I find with real
surprise, was married en secondes noces to Math. Othmar has
lost that prominence which once was his. And it seems, too, there
once figured in Manuel's heart affairs a Bel-Imperia, who, so near
as I can deduce from my notes, was a lady in a tapestry. Someone
unstitched her, to, I imagine, her destruction, although I suspect
that a few skeins of this quite forgotten Bel-Imperia endure in the
Radegonde of another tale.

Nor can I make anything whatever of my notes about Guivret (who
seems to have been in no way connected with Guivric the Sage), nor
about Biduz, nor about the Anti-Pope,—even though, to be
sure, one mention of this heresiarch yet survives in the present
book. I am wholly baffled to read, in my own penciling, such
proposed chapter headings as "The Jealousy of Niafer" and "How
Sclaug Loosed the Dead,"—which latter is with added
incomprehensibility annotated "(?Phorgemon)." And "The Spirit Who
Had Half of Everything" seems to have been exorcised pretty
thoroughly.... No; I find the most of my old notes as to this book
merely bewildering; and I find, too, something of pathos in these
embryons of unborn dreams which, for one cause or another, were
obliterated and have been utterly forgotten by their creator, very
much as in this book vexed Miramon Lluagor twists off the head of a
not quite satisfactory, whimpering design, and drops the valueless
fragments into his waste-basket.... But I do know that the entire
book developed, howsoever helterskelter, and after fumbling in no
matter how many blind alleys, from that first memorandum about the
troubling window of Ageus. All leads toward—and
through—that window.

The book, then, was published in the February of 1921. I need
not here deal with its semi-serial appearance in the guise of short
stories: these details are recorded elsewhere. But I confess with
appropriate humility that the reception of "Figures of Earth" by
the public was, as I have written in another place, a depressing
business. This romance, at that time, through one extraneous reason
and another, disappointed well-nigh everybody, for all that it has
since become, so near as I can judge, the best liked of my books,
especially among women. It seems, indeed, a fact sufficiently
edifying that, in appraising the two legendary heroes of Poictesme,
the sex of whom Jurgen esteemed himself a connoisseur, should,
almost unanimously, prefer Manuel.

For the rest,—since, as you may remember, this is the
third preface which I have written for this book,—I can but
repeat more or less what I have conceded elsewhere. This "Figures
of Earth" appeared immediately following, and during the temporary
sequestration of, "Jurgen." The fact was forthwith, quite
unreticently, discovered that in "Figures of Earth" I had not
succeeded in my attempt to rewrite its predecessor: and this crass
failure, so open, so flagrant, and so undeniable, caused what I can
only describe as the instant and overwhelming and universal triumph
of "Figures of Earth" to be precisely what did not occur. In 1921
Comstockery still surged, of course, in full cry against the
imprisoned pawnbroker and the crimes of his author, both literary
and personal; and the, after all, tolerably large portion of the
reading public who were not disgusted by Jurgen's lechery were now,
so near as I could gather, enraged by Manuel's lack of it.

It followed that—among the futile persons who use serious,
long words in talking about mere books,—aggrieved reproof of
my auctorial malversations, upon the one ground or the other,
became in 1921 biloquial and pandemic. Not many other volumes, I
believe, have been burlesqued and cried down in the public prints
by their own dedicatees.... But from the cicatrix of that healed
wound I turn away. I preserve a forgiving silence, comparable to
that of Hermione in the fifth act of "A Winter's Tale": I resolve
that whenever I mention the names of Louis Untermeyer and H.L.
Mencken it shall be in some connection more pleasant, and that here
I will not mention them at all.

Meanwhile the fifteen or so experiments in contrapuntal prose
were, in particular, uncharted passages from which I stayed unique
in deriving pleasure where others found bewilderment and no
tongue-tied irritation: but, in general, and above every
misdemeanor else, the book exasperated everybody by not being a
more successfully managed re-hashing of the then notorious
"Jurgen."

Since 1921, and since the rehabilitation of "Jurgen," the notion
has uprisen, gradually, among the more bold and speculative
thinkers, that perhaps I was not, after all, in this "Figures of
Earth" attempting to rewrite "Jurgen": and Manuel has made his own
friend.

James Branch Cabell

Richmond-in-Virginia

30 April 1927

Footnote 1: (return)

Omitted in this edition since it was not possible to include all
of Frank C. Papé's magnificent illustrations.—THE
PUBLISHER

A FOREWORD

"Amoto quoeramus seria ludo"

To



SINCLAIR LEWIS

A Foreword

MY DEAR LEWIS:

To you (whom I take to be as familiar with the Manuelian cycle
of romance as is any person now alive) it has for some while
appeared, I know, a not uncurious circumstance that in the Key
to the Popular Tales of Poictesme there should have been
included so little directly relative to Manuel himself. No reader
of the Popular Tales (as I recall your saying at the Alum
when we talked over, among so many other matters, this monumental
book) can fail to note that always Dom Manuel looms obscurely in
the background, somewhat as do King Arthur and white-bearded
Charlemagne in their several cycles, dispensing justice and
bestowing rewards, and generally arranging the future, for the
survivors of the outcome of stories which more intimately concern
themselves with Anavalt and Coth and Holden, and with Kerin and
Ninzian and Gonfal and Donander, and with Miramon (in his
rôle of Manuel's seneschal), or even with Sclaug and
Thragnar, than with the liege-lord of Poictesme. Except in the old
sixteenth-century chapbook (unknown to you, I believe, and never
reprinted since 1822, and not ever modernized into any cognizable
spelling), there seems to have been nowhere an English rendering of
the legends in which Dom Manuel is really the main figure.

Well, this book attempts to supply that desideratum, and is, so
far as the writer is aware, the one fairly complete epitome in
modern English of the Manuelian historiography not included by
Lewistam which has yet been prepared.

It is obvious, of course, that in a single volume of this bulk
there could not be included more than a selection from the great
body of myths which, we may assume, have accumulated gradually
round the mighty though shadowy figure of Manuel the Redeemer.
Instead, my aim has been to make choice of such stories and
traditions as seemed most fit to be cast into the shape of a
connected narrative and regular sequence of events; to lend to all
that wholesome, edifying and optimistic tone which in
reading-matter is so generally preferable to mere intelligence; and
meanwhile to preserve as much of the quaint style of the gestes as
is consistent with clearness. Then, too, in the original mediaeval
romances, both in their prose and metrical form, there are
occasional allusions to natural processes which make these stories
unfit to be placed in the hands of American readers, who, as a
body, attest their respectability by insisting that their parents
were guilty of unmentionable conduct; and such passages of course
necessitate considerable editing.

II

No schoolboy (and far less the scholastic chronicler of those
last final upshots for whose furtherance "Hannibal invaded Rome and
Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters") needs nowadays to be told that
the Manuel of these legends is to all intents a fictitious person.
That in the earlier half of the thirteenth century there was ruling
over the Poictoumois a powerful chieftain named Manuel, nobody has
of late disputed seriously. But the events of the actual human
existence of this Lord of Poictesme—very much as the Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa has been identified with the wood-demon
Barbatos, and the prophet Elijah, "caught up into the chariot of
the Vedic Vayu," has become one with the Slavonic Perun,—have
been inextricably blended with the legends of the Dirghic
Manu-Elul, Lord of August.

Thus, even the irregularity in Manuel's eyes is taken by
Vanderhoffen, in his Tudor Tales, to be a myth connecting
Manuel with the Vedic Rudra and the Russian Magarko and the Servian
Vii,—"and every beneficent storm-god represented with his eye
perpetually winking (like sheet lightning), lest his concentrated
look (the thunderbolt) should reduce the universe to ashes.... His
watery parentage, and the storm-god's relationship with a
swan-maiden of the Apsarasas (typifying the mists and clouds), and
with Freydis the fire queen, are equally obvious: whereas Niafer is
plainly a variant of Nephthys, Lady of the House, whose personality
Dr. Budge sums up as 'the goddess of the death which is not
eternal,' or Nerthus, the Subterranean Earth, which the warm
rainstorm quickens to life and fertility."

All this seems dull enough to be plausible. Yet no less an
authority than Charles Garnier has replied, in rather indignant
rebuttal: "Qu'ont étè en réalité Manuel
et Siegfried, Achille et Rustem? Par quels exploits ont-ils
mérité l'éternelle admiration que leur ont
vouée les hommes de leur race? Nul ne répondra jamais
à ces questions.... Mais Poictesme croit à la
réalité de cette figure que ses romans ont faite si
belle, car le pays n'a pas d'autre histoire. Cette figure du Comte
Manuel est réelle d'ailleurs, car elle est l'image
purifiée de la race qui l'a produite, et, si on peut
s'exprimer ainsi, l'incarnation de son génie."

—Which is quite just, and, when you come to think it over,
proves Dom Manuel to be nowadays, for practical purposes, at least
as real as Dr. Paul Vanderhoffen.

III

Between the two main epic cycles of Poictesme, as embodied in
Les Gestes de Manuel and La Haulte Histoire de
Jurgen, more or less comparison is inevitable. And Codman, I
believe, has put the gist of the matter succinctly enough.

Says Codman: "The Gestes are mundane stories, the History is a
cosmic affair, in that, where Manuel faces the world, Jurgen
considers the universe.... Dom Manuel is the Achilles of Poictesme,
as Jurgen is its Ulysses."

And, roughly, the distinction serves. Yet minute consideration
discovers, I think, in these two sets of legends a more profound,
if subtler, difference, in the handling of the protagonist: with
Jurgen all of the physical and mental man is rendered as a matter
of course; whereas in dealing with Manuel there is, always, I
believe, a certain perceptible and strange, if not inexplicable,
aloofness. Manuel did thus and thus, Manuel said so and so, these
legends recount: yes, but never anywhere have I detected any firm
assertion as to Manuel's thoughts and emotions, nor any peep into
the workings of this hero's mind. He is "done" from the outside,
always at arm's length. It is not merely that Manuel's nature is
tinctured with the cool unhumanness of his father the water-demon:
rather, these old poets of Poictesme would seem, whether of
intention or no, to have dealt with their national hero as a
person, howsoever admirable in many of his exploits, whom they have
never been able altogether to love, or entirely to sympathize with,
or to view quite without distrust.

There are several ways of accounting for this
fact,—ranging from the hurtful as well as beneficent aspect
of the storm-god, to the natural inability of a poet to understand
a man who succeeds in everything: but the fact is, after all, of no
present importance save that it may well have prompted Lewistam to
scamp his dealings with this always somewhat ambiguous Manuel, and
so to omit the hereinafter included legends, as unsuited to the
clearer and sunnier atmosphere of the Popular Tales.

For my part, I am quite content, in this Comedy of Appearances,
to follow the old romancers' lead. "Such and such things were said
and done by our great Manuel," they say to us, in effect: "such and
such were the appearances, and do you make what you can of
them."

I say that, too, with the addition that in real life, also, such
is the fashion in which we are compelled to deal with all
happenings and with all our fellows, whether they wear or lack the
gaudy name of heroism.

Dumbarton Grange

October, 1920

PART ONE

THE BOOK OF CREDIT

TO

WILSON FOLLETT

Then answered the Magician dredefully: Manuel, Manuel, now I
shall shewe unto thee many bokes of Nygromancy, and howe
thou shalt cum by it lyghtly and knowe the practyse therein. And,
moreouer, I shall shewe and informe you so that thou shall have thy
Desyre, whereby my thynke it is a great Gyfte for so lytyll a
doynge.

I

How Manuel Left the Mire

They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles
were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living
modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs. They tell also that
Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was
reserved for him.

Meanwhile in all the environs of Rathgor, and in the thatched
villages of Lower Targamon, he was well liked: and when the young
people gathered in the evening to drink brandy and eat nuts and
gingerbread, nobody danced more merrily than Squinting Manuel. He
had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn,
blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to
consider him a fool. Then, too, young Manuel was very often
detected smiling sleepily over nothing, and his gravest care in
life appeared to be that figure which Manuel had made out of marsh
clay from the pool of Haranton.

This figure he was continually reshaping and realtering. The
figure stood upon the margin of the pool; and near by were two
stones overgrown with moss, and supporting a cross of old
worm-eaten wood, which commemorated what had been done there.

One day, toward autumn, as Manuel was sitting in this place, and
looking into the deep still water, a stranger came, and he wore a
fierce long sword that interfered deplorably with his walking.

"Now I wonder what it is you find in that dark pool to keep you
staring so?" the stranger asked, first of all.

"I do not very certainly know," replied Manuel "but mistily I
seem to see drowned there the loves and the desires and the
adventures I had when I wore another body than this. For the water
of Haranton, I must tell you, is not like the water of other
fountains, and curious dreams engender in this pool."

"I speak no ill against oneirologya, although broad noon is
hardly the best time for its practise," declared the snub-nosed
stranger. "But what is that thing?" he asked, pointing.

"It is the figure of a man, which I have modeled and re-modeled,
sir, but cannot seem to get exactly to my liking. So it is
necessary that I keep laboring at it until the figure is to my
thinking and my desire."

"But, Manuel, what need is there for you to model it at
all?"

"Because my mother, sir, was always very anxious for me to make
a figure in the world, and when she lay a-dying I promised her that
I would do so, and then she put a geas upon me to do it."

"Ah, to be sure! but are you certain it was this kind of figure
she meant?"

"Yes, for I have often heard her say that, when I grew up, she
wanted me to make myself a splendid and admirable young man in
every respect. So it is necessary that I make the figure of a young
man, for my mother was not of these parts, but a woman of Ath
Cliath, and so she put a geas upon me—"

"Yes, yes, you had mentioned this geas, and I am wondering what
sort of a something is this geas."

"It is what you might call a bond or an obligation, sir, only it
is of the particularly strong and unreasonable and affirmative and
secret sort which the Virbolg use."

The stranger now looked from the figure to Manuel, and the
stranger deliberated the question (which later was to puzzle so
many people) if any human being could be as simple as Manuel
appeared. Manuel at twenty was not yet the burly giant he became.
But already he was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the
heads of few men reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome
exterior, high featured and blond, having a narrow small head, and
vivid light blue eyes, and the chest of a stallion; a person whose
left eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so that the stupendous boy
at his simplest appeared to be winking the information that he was
in jest.

All in all, the stranger found this young swineherd ambiguous;
and there was another curious thing too which the stranger noticed
about Manuel.

"Is it on account of this geas," asked the stranger, "that a
great lock has been sheared away from your yellow hair?"

In an instant Manuel's face became dark and wary. "No," he said,
"that has nothing to do with my geas, and we must not talk about
that"

"Now you are a queer lad to be having such an obligation upon
your head, and to be having well-nigh half the hair cut away from
your head, and to be having inside your head such notions. And
while small harm has ever come from humoring one's mother, yet I
wonder at you, Manuel, that you should sit here sleeping in the
sunlight among your pigs, and be giving your young time to
improbable sculpture and stagnant water, when there is such a fine
adventure awaiting you, and when the Norns are foretelling such
high things about you as they spin the thread of your living."

"Hah, glory be to God, friend, but what is this adventure?"

"The adventure is that the Count of Arnaye's daughter yonder has
been carried off by a magician, and that the high Count Demetrios
offers much wealth and broad lands, and his daughter's hand in
marriage, too, to the lad that will fetch back this lovely
girl."

"I have heard talk of this in the kitchen of Arnaye, where I
sometimes sell them a pig. But what are such matters to a
swineherd?"

"My lad, you are to-day a swineherd drowsing in the sun, as
yesterday you were a baby squalling in the cradle, but to-morrow
you will be neither of these if there by any truth whatever in the
talking of the Norns as they gossip at the foot of their ash-tree
beside the door of the Sylan's House."

Manuel appeared to accept the inevitable. He bowed his brightly
colored high head, saying gravely: "All honor be to Urdhr and
Verdandi and Skuld! If I am decreed to be the champion that is to
rescue the Count of Arnaye's daughter, it is ill arguing with the
Norns. Come, tell me now, how do you call this doomed magician, and
how does one get to him to sever his wicked head from his foul
body?"

"Men speak of him as Miramon Lluagor, lord of the nine kinds of
sleep and prince of the seven madnesses. He lives in mythic
splendor at the top of the gray mountain called Vraidex, where he
contrives all manner of illusions, and, in particular, designs the
dreams of men."

"Yes, in the kitchen of Arnaye, also, such was the report
concerning this Miramon: and not a person in the kitchen denied
that this Miramon is an ugly customer."

"He is the most subtle of magicians. None can withstand him, and
nobody can pass the terrible serpentine designs which Miramon has
set to guard the gray scarps of Vraidex, unless one carries the
more terrible sword Flamberge, which I have here in its blue
scabbard."

"Why, then, it is you who must rescue the Count's daughter."

"No, that would not do at all: for there is in the life of a
champion too much of turmoil and of buffetings and murderings to
suit me, who am a peace-loving person. Besides, to the champion who
rescues the Lady Gisèle will be given her hand in marriage,
and as I have a wife, I know that to have two wives would lead to
twice too much dissension to suit me, who am a peace-loving person.
So I think it is you who had better take the sword and the
adventure."

"Well," Manuel said, "much wealth and broad lands and a lovely
wife are finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs."

So Manuel girded on the charmed scabbard, and with the charmed
sword he sadly demolished the clay figure he could not get quite
right. Then Manuel sheathed Flamberge, and Manuel cried farewell to
the pigs.

"I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to
die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun.
A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from
you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure
wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall
not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and
into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this
world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that,
they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone
out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon."

"So much rhetoric for the pigs," says the stranger, "is well
enough, and likely to please them. But come, is there not some girl
or another to whom you should be saying good-bye with other things
than words?"

"No, at first I thought I would also bid farewell to Suskind,
who is sometimes friendly with me in the twilight wood, but upon
reflection it seems better not to. For Suskind would probably weep,
and exact promises of eternal fidelity, and otherwise dampen the
ardor with which I look toward to-morrow and the winning of the
wealthy Count of Arnaye's lovely daughter."

"Now, to be sure, you are a queer cool candid fellow, you young
Manuel, who will go far, whether for good or evil!"

"I do not know about good or evil. But I am Manuel, and I shall
follow after my own thinking and my own desires."

"And certainly it is no less queer you should be saying that:
for, as everybody knows, that used to be the favorite byword of
your namesake the famous Count Manuel who is so newly dead in
Poictesme yonder."

At that the young swineherd nodded, gravely. "I must accept the
omen, sir. For, as I interpret it, my great namesake has
courteously made way for me, in order that I may go far beyond
him."

Then Manuel cried farewell and thanks to the mild-mannered,
snub-nosed stranger, and Manuel left the miller's pigs to their own
devices by the pool of Haranton, and Manuel marched away in his
rags to meet a fate that was long talked about.

II

Niafer

The first thing of all that Manuel did, was to fill a knapsack
with simple and nutritious food, and then he went to the gray
mountain called Vraidex, upon the remote and cloud-wrapped summit
of which dread Miramon Lluagor dwelt, in a doubtful palace wherein
the lord of the nine sleeps contrived illusions and designed the
dreams of men. When Manuel had passed under some very old
maple-trees, and was beginning the ascent, he found a smallish,
flat-faced, dark-haired boy going up before him.

"Hail, snip," says Manuel, "and whatever are you doing in this
perilous place?"

"Why, I am going," the dark-haired boy replied, "to find out how
the Lady Gisèle d'Arnaye is faring on the tall top of this
mountain."

"Oho, then we will undertake this adventure together, for that
is my errand too. And when the adventure is fulfilled, we will
fight together, and the survivor will have the wealth and broad
lands and the Count's daughter to sit on his knee. What do they
call you, friend?"

"I am called Niafer. But I believe that the Lady Gisèle
is already married, to Miramon Lluagor. At least, I sincerely hope
she is married to this great magician, for otherwise it would not
be respectable for her to be living with him at the top of this
gray mountain."

"Fluff and puff! what does that matter?" says Manuel. "There is
no law against a widow's remarrying forthwith: and widows are
quickly made by any champion about whom the wise Norns are already
talking. But I must not tell you about that, Niafer, because I do
not wish to appear boastful. So I must simply say to you, Niafer,
that I am called Manuel, and have no other title as yet, being not
yet even a baron."

"Come now," says Niafer, "but you are rather sure of yourself
for a young boy!"

"Why, of what may I be sure in this shifting world if not of
myself?"

"Our elders, Manuel, declare that such self-conceit is a fault,
and our elders, they say, are wiser than we."

"Our elders, Niafer, have long had the management of this
world's affairs, and you can see for yourself what they have made
of these affairs. What sort of a world is it, I ask you, in which
time peculates the gold from hair and the crimson from all lips,
and the north wind carries away the glow and glory and contentment
of October, and a driveling old magician steals a lovely girl? Why,
such maraudings are out of reason, and show plainly that our elders
have no notion how to manage things."

"Eh, Manuel, and will you re-model the world?"

"Who knows?" says Manuel, in the high pride of his youth. "At
all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered."

Then Niafer, a more prosaic person, gave him a long look
compounded equally of admiration and pity, but Niafer did not
dispute the matter. Instead, these two pledged constant fealty
until they should have rescued Madame Gisèle.

"Then we will fight for her," says Manuel, again.

"First, Manuel, let me see her face, and then let me see her
state of mind, and afterward I will see about fighting you.
Meanwhile, this is a very tall mountain, and the climbing of it
will require all the breath which we are wasting here."

So the two began the ascent of Vraidex, by the winding road upon
which the dreams traveled when they were sent down to men by the
lord of the seven madnesses. All gray rock was the way at first.
But they soon reached the gnawed bones of those who had ascended
before them, scattered about a small plain that was overgrown with
ironweed: and through and over the tall purple blossoms came to
destroy the boys the Serpent of the East, a very dreadful design
with which Miramon afflicted the sleep of Lithuanians and Tartars.
The snake rode on a black horse, a black falcon perched on his
head, and a black hound followed him. The horse stumbled, the
falcon clamored, the hound howled.

Then said the snake: "My steed, why do you stumble? my hound,
why do you howl? and, my falcon, why do you clamor? For these three
doings foresay some ill to me."

"Oh, a great ill!" replies Manuel, with his charmed sword
already half out of the scabbard.

But Niafer cried: "An endless ill is foresaid by these doings.
For I have been to the Island of the Oaks: and under the twelfth
oak was a copper casket, and in the casket was a purple duck, and
in the duck was an egg: and in the egg, O Norka, was and is your
death."

"It is true that my death is in such an egg," said the Serpent
of the East, "but nobody will ever find that egg, and therefore I
am resistless and immortal."

"To the contrary, the egg, as you can perceive, is in my hand;
and when I break this egg you will die, and it is smaller worms
than you that will be thanking me for their supper this night."

The serpent looked at the poised egg, and he trembled and
writhed so that his black scales scattered everywhither
scintillations of reflected sunlight. He cried, "Give me the egg,
and I will permit you two to ascend unmolested, to a more terrible
destruction."

Niafer was not eager to do this, but Manuel thought it best, and
so at last Niafer consented to the bargain, for the sake of the
serpent's children. Then the two lads went upward, while the
serpent bandaged the eyes of his horse and of his hound, and hooded
his falcon, and crept gingerly away to hide the egg in an
unmentionable place.

"But how in the devil," says Manuel, "did you manage to come by
that invaluable egg?"

"It is a quite ordinary duck egg, Manuel. But the Serpent of the
East has no way of discovering the fact unless he breaks the egg:
and that is the one thing the serpent will never do, because he
thinks it is the magic egg which contains his death."

"Come, Niafer, you are not handsome to look at, but you are far
cleverer than I thought you!"

Now, as Manuel clapped Niafer on the shoulder, the forest beside
the roadway was agitated, and the underbrush crackled, and the tall
beech-trees crashed and snapped and tumbled helter-skelter. The
crust of the earth was thus broken through by the Serpent of the
North. Only the head and throat of this design of Miramon's was
lifted from the jumbled trees, for it was requisite of course that
the serpent's lower coils should never loose their grip upon the
foundations of Norroway. All of the design that showed was
overgrown with seaweed and barnacles.

"It is the will of Miramon Lluagor that I forthwith demolish you
both," says this serpent, yawning with a mouth like a fanged
cave.

Once more young Manuel had reached for his charmed sword
Flamberge, but it was Niafer who spoke.

"No, for before you can destroy me," says Niafer, "I shall have
cast this bridle over your head."

"What sort of bridle is that?" inquired the great snake
scornfully.

"And are those goggling flaming eyes not big enough and bright
enough to see that this is the soft bridle called Gleipnir, which
is made of the breath of fish and of the spittle of birds and of
the footfall of a cat?"

"Now, although certainly such a bridle was foretold," the snake
conceded, a little uneasily, "how can I make sure that you speak
the truth when you say this particular bridle is Gleipnir?"

"Why, in this way: I will cast the bridle over your head, and
then you will see for yourself that the old prophecy will be
fulfilled, and that all power and all life will go out of you, and
that the Northmen will dream no more."

"No, do you keep that thing away from me, you little fool! No,
no: we will not test your truthfulness in that way. Instead, do you
two continue your ascent, to a more terrible destruction, and to
face barbaric dooms coming from the West. And do you give me the
bridle to demolish in place of you. And then, if I live forever I
shall know that this is indeed Gleipnir, and that you have spoken
the truth."

So Niafer consented to this testing of his veracity, rather than
permit this snake to die, and the foundations of Norroway (in which
kingdom, Niafer confessed, he had an aunt then living) thus to be
dissolved by the loosening of the dying serpent's grip upon
Middlegarth. The bridle was yielded, and Niafer and Manuel went
upward.

Manuel asked, "Snip, was that in truth the bridle called
Gleipnir?"

"No, Manuel, it is an ordinary bridle. But this Serpent of the
North has no way of discovering this fact except by fitting the
bridle over his head: and this one thing the serpent will never do,
because he knows that then, if my bridle proved to be Gleipnir, all
power and all life would go out of him."

"O subtle, ugly little snip!" says Manuel: and again he patted
Niafer on the shoulder. Then Manuel spoke very highly in praise of
cleverness, and said that, for one, he had never objected to it in
its place.

III

Ascent of Vraidex

Now it was evening, and the two sought shelter in a queer
windmill by the roadside, finding there a small wrinkled old man in
a patched coat. He gave them lodgings for the night, and honest
bread and cheese, but for his own supper he took frogs out of his
bosom, and roasted these in the coals.

Then the two boys sat in the doorway, and watched that night's
dreams going down from Vraidex to their allotted work in the world
of visionary men, to whom these dreams were passing in the form of
incredible white vapors. Sitting thus, the lads fell to talking of
this and the other, and Manuel found that Niafer was a pagan of the
old faith: and this, said Manuel, was an excellent thing.

"For, when we have achieved our adventure," says Manuel, "and
must fight against each other for the Count's daughter, I shall
certainly kill you, dear Niafer. Now if you were a Christian, and
died thus unholily in trying to murder me, you would have to go
thereafter to the unquenchable flames of purgatory or to even
hotter flames: but among the pagans all that die valiantly in
battle go straight to the pagan paradise. Yes, yes, your abominable
religion is a great comfort to me."

"It is a comfort to me also, Manuel. But, as a Christian, you
ought not ever to have any kind words for heathenry."

"Ah, but," says Manuel, "while my mother Dorothy of the White
Arms was the most zealous sort of Christian, my father, you must
know, was not a communicant."

"Who was your father, Manuel?"

"No less a person than the Swimmer, Oriander, who is in turn the
son of Mimir."

"Ah, to be sure! and who is Mimir?"

"Well, Niafer, that is a thing not very generally known, but he
is famed for his wise head."

"And, Manuel, who, while we speak of it, is Oriander?"

Said Manuel:

"Oh, out of the void and the darkness that is peopled by Mimir's
brood, from the ultimate silent fastness of the desolate deep-sea
gloom, and the peace of that ageless gloom, blind Oriander came,
from Mimir, to be at war with the sea and to jeer at the sea's
desire. When tempests are seething and roaring from the Aesir's
inverted bowl all seamen have heard his shouting and the cry that
his mirth sends up: when the rim of the sea tilts up, and the
world's roof wavers down, his face gleams white where distraught
waves smite the Swimmer they may not tire. No eyes were allotted
this Swimmer, but in blindness, with ceaseless jeers, he battles
till time be done with, and the love-songs of earth be sung, and
the very last dirge be sung, and a baffled and outworn sea
begrudgingly own Oriander alone may mock at the might of its
ire."

"Truly, Manuel, that sounds like a parent to be proud of, and
not at all like a church-going parent, and of course his blindness
would account for that squint of yours. Yes, certainly it would. So
do you tell me about this blind Oriander, and how he came to meet
your mother Dorothy of the White Arms, as I suppose he did
somewhere or other."

"Oh, no," says Manuel, "for Oriander never leaves off swimming,
and so he must stay always in the water. So he never actually met
my mother, and she married Emmerick, who was my nominal father. But
such and such things happened."

Then Manuel told Niafer all about the circumstances of Manuel's
birth in a cave, and about the circumstances of Manuel's upbringing
in and near Rathgor and the two boys talked on and on, while the
unborn dreams went drifting by outside; and within the small
wrinkled old man sat listening with a very doubtful smile, and
saying never a word.

"And why is your hair cut so queerly, Manuel?"

"That, Niafer, we need not talk about, in part because it is not
going to be cut that way any longer, and in part because it is time
for bed."

The next morning Manuel and Niafer paid the ancient price which
their host required. They left him cobbling shoes, and, still
ascending, encountered no more bones, for nobody else had climbed
so high. They presently came to a bridge whereon were eight spears,
and the bridge was guarded by the Serpent of the West. This snake
was striped with blue and gold, and wore on his head a great cap of
humming-birds' feathers.

Manuel half drew his sword to attack this serpentine design,
with which Miramon Lluagor made sleeping terrible for the red
tribes that hunt and fish behind the Hesperides. But Manuel looked
at Niafer.

And Niafer displayed a drolly marked small turtle, saying,
"Maskanako, do you not recognize Tulapin, the turtle that never
lies?"

The serpent howled, as though a thousand dogs had been kicked
simultaneously, and the serpent fled.

"Why, snip, did he do that?" asked Manuel, smiling sleepily and
gravely, as for the third time he found that his charmed sword
Flamberge was unneeded.

"Truly, Manuel, nobody knows why this serpent dreads the turtle:
but our concern is less with the cause than with the effect.
Meanwhile, those eight spears are not to be touched on any
account."

"Is what you have a quite ordinary turtle?" asked Manuel,
meekly.

Niafer said: "Of course it is. Where would I be getting
extraordinary turtles?"

"I had not previously considered that problem," replied Manuel,
"but the question is certainly unanswerable."

They then sat down to lunch, and found the bread and cheese they
had purchased from the little old man that morning was turned to
lumps of silver and virgin gold in Manuel's knapsack. "This is very
disgusting," said Manuel, "and I do not wonder my back was near
breaking." He flung away the treasure, and they lunched frugally on
blackberries.

From among the entangled blackberry bushes came the glowing
Serpent of the South, who was the smallest and loveliest and most
poisonous of Miramon's designs. With this snake Niafer dealt
curiously. Niafer employed three articles in the transaction: two
of these things are not to be talked about, but the third was a
little figure carved in hazel-wood.

"Certainly you are very clever," said Manuel, when they had
passed this serpent. "Still, your employment of those first two
articles was unprecedented, and your disposal of the carved figure
absolutely embarrassed me."

"Before such danger as confronted us, Manuel, it does not pay to
be squeamish," replied Niafer, "and my exorcism was good
Dirgham."

And many other adventures and perils they encountered, such as
if all were told would make a long and most improbable history. But
they had clear favorable weather, and they won through each pinch,
by one or another fraud which Niafer evolved the instant that
gullery was needed. Manuel was loud in his praises of the
surprising cleverness of his flat-faced dark comrade, and protested
that hourly he loved Niafer more and more: and Manuel said too that
he was beginning to think more and more distastefully of the time
when Niafer and Manuel would have to fight for the Count of
Arnaye's daughter until one of them had killed the other.

Meanwhile the sword Flamberge stayed in its curious blue
scabbard.

IV

In the Doubtful Palace

So Manuel and Niafer came unhurt to the top of the gray mountain
called Vraidex, and to the doubtful palace of Miramon Lluagor.
Gongs, slowly struck, were sounding as if in languid dispute among
themselves, when the two lads came across a small level plain where
grass was interspersed with white clover. Here and there stood
wicked looking dwarf trees with violet and yellow foliage. The
doubtful palace before the circumspectly advancing boys appeared to
be constructed of black and gold lacquer, and it was decorated with
the figures of butterflies and tortoises and swans.

This day being a Thursday, Manuel and Niafer entered
unchallenged through gates of horn and ivory; and came into a red
corridor in which five gray beasts, like large hairless cats, were
casting dice. These animals grinned, and licked their lips, as the
boys passed deeper into the doubtful palace.

In the centre of the palace Miramon had set like a tower one of
the tusks of Behemoth: the tusk was hollowed out into five large
rooms, and in the inmost room, under a canopy with green tassels,
they found the magician.

"Come forth, and die now, Miramon Lluagor!" shouts Manuel,
brandishing his sword, for which, at last, employment was promised
here.

The magician drew closer about him his old threadbare
dressing-gown, and he desisted from his enchantments, and he put
aside a small unfinished design, which scuttled into the fireplace,
whimpering. And Manuel perceived that the dreadful prince of the
seven madnesses had the appearance of the mild-mannered stranger
who had given Manuel the charmed sword.

"Ah, yes, it was good of you to come so soon," says Miramon
Lluagor, rearing back his head, and narrowing his gentle and sombre
eyes, as the magician looked at them down the sides of what little
nose he had. "Yes, and your young friend, too, is very welcome. But
you boys must be quite worn out, after toiling up this mountain, so
do you sit down and have a cup of wine before I surrender my dear
wife."

Says Manuel, sternly, "But what is the meaning of all this?"

"The meaning and the upshot, clearly," replied the magician, "is
that, since you have the charmed sword Flamberge, and since the
wearer of Flamberge is irresistible, it would be nonsense for me to
oppose you."

"But, Miramon, it was you who gave me the sword!"

Miramon rubbed his droll little nose for a while, before
speaking. "And how else was I to get conquered? For, I must tell
you, Manuel, it is a law of the Léshy that a magician cannot
surrender his prey unless the magician be conquered. I must tell
you, too, that when I carried off Gisèle I acted, as I by
and by discovered, rather injudiciously."

"Now, by holy Paul and Pollux! I do not understand this at all,
Miramon."

"Why, Manuel, you must know she was a very charming girl, and in
appearance just the type that I had always fancied for a wife. But
perhaps it is not wise to be guided entirely by appearances. For I
find now that she has a strong will in her white bosom, and a
tireless tongue in her glittering head, and I do not equally admire
all four of these possessions."

"Still, Miramon, if only a few months back your love was so
great as to lead you into abducting her—"

The prince of the seven madnesses said gravely:

"Love, as I think, is an instant's fusing of shadow and
substance. They that aspire to possess love utterly, fall into
folly. This is forbidden: you cannot. The lover, beholding that
fusing move as a golden-hued goddess, accessible, kindly and
priceless, wooes and ill-fatedly wins all the substance. The
golden-hued shadow dims in the dawn of his married life, dulled
with content, and the shadow vanishes. So there remains, for the
puzzled husband's embracing, flesh which is fair and dear, no
doubt, yet is flesh such as his; and talking and talking and
talking; and kisses in all ways desirable. Love, of a sort, too
remains, but hardly the love that was yesterday's."

Now the unfinished design came out of the fireplace, and climbed
up Miramon's leg, still faintly whimpering. He looked at it
meditatively, then twisted off the creature's head and dropped the
fragments into his waste-basket.

Miramon sighed. He said:

"This is the cry of all husbands that now are or may be
hereafter,—'What has become of the girl that I married? and
how should I rightly deal with this woman whom somehow time has
involved in my doings? Love, of a sort, now I have for her, but not
the love that was yesterday's—'"

While Miramon spoke thus, the two lads were looking at each
other blankly: for they were young, and their understanding of this
matter was as yet withheld.

Then said Miramon:

"Yes, he is wiser that shelters his longing from any such
surfeit. Yes, he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the
substance, wisely regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow
which, if you grasp at it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will
follow, gilding all life with its glory, and keeping always one
woman young and most fair and most wise, and unwon; and keeping you
always never contented, but armed with a self-respect that no
husband manages quite to retain in the face of being contented. No,
for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance, fused for
that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest pleasure from
either alone, but hardly from these two united."

"Well," Manuel conceded, "all this may be true; but I never
quite understood hexameters, and so I could not ever see the good
of talking in them."

"I always do that, Manuel, when I am deeply affected. It is, I
suppose, the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment
that inhibitions are removed, for when I think about the impending
severance from my dear wife I more or less lose control of
myself—You see, she takes an active interest in my work, and
that does not do with a creative artist in any line. Oh, dear me,
no, not for a moment!" says Miramon, forlornly.

"But how can that be?" Niafer asked him.

"As all persons know, I design the dreams of men. Now
Gisèle asserts that people have enough trouble in real life,
without having to go to sleep to look for it—"

"Certainly that is true," says Niafer.

"So she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and
edifying dreams and glad dreams. She says you must give tired
persons what they most need; and is emphatic about the importance
of everybody's sleeping in a wholesome atmosphere. So I have not
been permitted to design a fine nightmare or a creditable
terror—nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no sea-serpents or
krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a really free
hand,—for months and months: and my art suffers. Then, as for
other dreams, of a more roguish nature—"

"What sort of dreams can you be talking about, I wonder,
Miramon?"

The magician described what he meant. "Such dreams also she has
quite forbidden," he added, with a sigh.

"I see," said Manuel: "and now I think of it, it is true that I
have not had a dream of that sort for quite a while."

"No man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these
degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. And here
again my art suffers, for my designs in this line were always
especially vivid and effective, and pleased the most rigid. Then,
too, Gisèle is always doing and telling me things for my own
good—In fine, my lads, my wife takes such a flattering
interest in all my concerns that the one way out for any
peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my clutches,"
said Miramon, fretfully.

"It is difficult to explain to you, Manuel, just now, but after
you have been married to Gisèle for a while you will
comprehend without any explaining."

"Now, Miramon, I marvel to see a great magician controlled by a
woman who is in his power, and who can, after all, do nothing but
talk."

Miramon for some while considered Manuel, rather helplessly.
"Unmarried men do wonder about that," said Miramon. "At all events,
I will summon her, and you can explain how you have conquered me,
and then you can take her away and marry her yourself, and Heaven
help you!"

"But shall I explain that it was you who gave me the resistless
sword?"

"No, Manuel: no, you should be candid within more rational
limits. For you are now a famous champion, that has crowned with
victory a righteous cause for which many stalwart knights and
gallant gentlemen have made the supreme sacrifice, because they
knew that in the end the right must conquer. Your success thus
represents the working out of a great moral principle, and to
explain the practical minutiae of these august processes is not
always quite respectable. Besides, if Gisèle thought I
wished to get rid of her she would most certainly resort to
comments of which I prefer not to think."

But now into the room came the magician's wife,
Gisèle.

"She is, certainly, rather pretty," said Niafer, to Manuel.

Said Manuel, rapturously: "She is the finest and loveliest
creature that I have ever seen. Beholding her unequalled beauty, I
know that here are all the dreams of yesterday fulfilled. I
recollect, too, my songs of yesterday, which I was used to sing to
my pigs, about my love for a far princess who was 'white as a lily,
more red than roses, and resplendent as rubies of the Orient,' for
here I find my old songs to be applicable, if rather inadequate.
And by this shabby villain's failure to appreciate the unequalled
beauty of his victim I am amazed."

"As to that, I have my suspicions," Niafer replied. "And now she
is about to speak I believe she will justify these suspicions, for
Madame Gisèle is in no placid frame of mind."

"What is this nonsense," says the proud shining lady, to Miramon
Lluagor, "that I hear about your having been conquered?"

"Alas, my love, it is perfectly true. This champion has, in some
inexplicable way, come by the magic weapon Flamberge which is the
one weapon wherewith I can be conquered. So I have yielded to him,
and he is about, I think, to sever my head from my body."

The beautiful girl was indignant, because she had recognized
that, magician or no, there is small difference in husbands after
the first month or two; and with Miramon tolerably well trained,
she had no intention of changing him for another husband. Therefore
Gisèle inquired, "And what about me?" in a tone that
foreboded turmoil.

The magician rubbed his hands, uncomfortably. "My dear, I am of
course quite powerless before Flamberge. Inasmuch as your rescue
appears to have been effected in accordance with every rule in
these matters, and the victorious champion is resolute to requite
my evil-doing and to restore you to your grieving parents, I am
afraid there is nothing I can well do about it."

"Do you look me in the eye, Miramon Lluagor!" says the Lady
Gisèle. The dreadful prince of the seven madnesses obeyed
her, with a placating smile. "Yes, you have been up to something,"
she said, "And Heaven only knows what, though of course it does not
really matter."

Madame Gisèle then looked at Manuel "So you are the
champion that has come to rescue me!" she said, unhastily, as her
big sapphire eyes appraised him over her great fan of gaily colored
feathers, and as Manuel somehow began to fidget.

Gisèle looked last of all at Niafer. "I must say you have
been long enough in coming," observed Gisèle.

"It took me two days, madame, to find and catch a turtle,"
Niafer replied, "and that delayed me."

"Oh, you have always some tale or other, trust you for that, but
it is better late than never. Come, Niafer, and do you know
anything about this gawky, ragtag, yellow-haired young
champion?"

"Yes, madame, he formerly lived in attendance upon the miller's
pigs, down Rathgor way, and I have seen him hanging about the
kitchen at Arnaye."

Gisèle turned now toward the magician, with her thin gold
chains and the innumerable brilliancies of her jewels flashing no
more brightly than flashed the sapphire of her eyes. "There!" she
said, terribly: "and you were going to surrender me to a swineherd,
with half the hair chopped from his head, and with the shirt
sticking out of both his ragged elbows!"

"My dearest, irrespective of tonsorial tastes, and disregarding
all sartorial niceties, and swineherd or not, he holds the magic
sword Flamberge, before which all my powers are nothing."

"But that is easily settled. Have men no sense whatever! Boy, do
you give me that sword, before you hurt yourself fiddling with it,
and let us have an end of this nonsense."

Thus the proud lady spoke, and for a while the victorious
champion regarded her with very youthful looking, hurt eyes. But he
was not routed.

"Madame Gisèle," replied Manuel, "gawky and poorly clad
and young as I may be, so long as I retain this sword I am master
of you all and of the future too. Yielding it, I yield everything
my elders have taught me to prize, for my grave elders have taught
me that much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife are finer
things to ward than a parcel of pigs. So, if I yield at all, I must
first bargain and get my price for yielding."

He turned now from Gisèle to Niafer. "Dear snip," said
Manuel, "you too must have your say in my bargaining, because from
the first it has been your cleverness that has saved us, and has
brought us two so high. For see, at last I have drawn Flamberge,
and I stand at last at the doubtful summit of Vraidex, and I am
master of the hour and of the future. I have but to sever the
wicked head of this doomed magician from his foul body, and that
will be the end of him—"

"No, no," says Miramon, soothingly, "I shall merely be turned
into something else, which perhaps we had better not discuss. But
it will not inconvenience me in the least, so do you not hold back
out of mistaken kindness to me, but instead do you smite, and take
your well-earned reward."

"Either way," submitted Manuel, "I have but to strike, and I
acquire much wealth and sleek farming-lands and a lovely wife, and
the swineherd becomes a great nobleman. But it is you, Niafer, who
have won all these things for me with your cleverness, and to me it
seems that these wonderful rewards are less wonderful than my dear
comrade."

"But you too are very wonderful," said Niafer, loyally.

Says Manuel, smiling sadly: "I am not so wonderful but that in
the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. Look
you, Niafer, I had thought I would be changed when I had become a
famous champion, but for all that I stand posturing here with this
long sword, and am master of the hour and of the future, I remain
the boy that last Thursday was tending pigs. I was not afraid of
the terrors which beset me on my way to rescue the Count's
daughter, but of the Count's daughter herself I am horribly afraid.
Not for worlds would I be left alone with her. No, such fine and
terrific ladies are not for swineherds, and it is another sort of
wife that I desire."

"Whom then do you desire for a wife," says Niafer, "if not the
loveliest and the wealthiest lady in all Rathgor and Lower
Targamon?"

"Why, I desire the cleverest and dearest and most wonderful
creature in all the world," says Manuel,—"whom I recollect
seeing some six weeks ago when I was in the kitchen at Arnaye."

"Ah, ah! it might be arranged, then. But who is this marvelous
woman?"

Manuel said, "You are that woman, Niafer."

Niafer replied nothing, but Niafer smiled. Niafer raised one
shoulder a little, rubbing it against Manuel's broad chest, but
Niafer still kept silence. So the two young people regarded each
other for a while, not speaking, and to every appearance not
valuing Miramon Lluagor and his encompassing enchantments at a
straw's worth, nor valuing anything save each other.

"All things are changed for me," says Manuel, presently, in a
hushed voice, "and for the rest of time I live in a world wherein
Niafer differs from all other persons."

"My dearest," Niafer replied, "there is no sparkling queen nor
polished princess anywhere but the woman's heart in her would be
jumping with joy to have you looking at her twice, and I am only a
servant girl!"

"But certainly," said the rasping voice of Gisèle,
"Niafer is my suitably disguised heathen waiting-woman, to whom my
husband sent a dream some while ago, with instructions to join me
here, so that I might have somebody to look after my things. So,
Niafer, since you were fetched to wait on me, do you stop pawing at
that young pig-tender, and tell me what is this I hear about your
remarkable cleverness!"

Instead, it was Manuel who proudly told of the shrewd devices
through which Niafer had passed the serpents and the other terrors
of sleep. And the while that the tall boy was boasting, Miramon
Lluagor smiled, and Gisèle looked very hard at Niafer: for
Miramon and his wife both knew that the cleverness of Niafer was as
far to seek as her good looks, and that the dream which Miramon had
sent had carefully instructed Niafer as to these devices.

"Therefore, Madame Gisèle," says Manuel, in conclusion,
"I will give you Flamberge, and Miramon and Vraidex, and all the
rest of earth to boot, in exchange for the most wonderful and
clever woman in the world."

And with a flourish, Manuel handed over the charmed sword
Flamberge to the Count's lovely daughter, and he took the hand of
the swart, flat-faced servant girl.

"Come now," says Miramon, in a sad flurry, "this is an imposing
performance. I need not say it arouses in me the most delightful
sort of surprise and all other appropriate emotions. But as touches
your own interests, Manuel, do you think your behavior is quite
sensible?"

Tall Manuel looked down upon him with a sort of scornful pity.
"Yes, Miramon: for I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking
and my own desire. Of course it is very fine of me to be renouncing
so much wealth and power for the sake of my wonderful dear Niafer:
but she is worth the sacrifice, and, besides, she is witnessing all
this magnanimity, and cannot well fail to be impressed."

Niafer was of course reflecting: "This is very foolish and dear
of him, and I shall be compelled, in mere decency, to pretend to
corresponding lunacies for the first month or so of our marriage.
After that, I hope, we will settle down to some more reasonable way
of living."

Meanwhile she regarded Manuel fondly, and quite as though she
considered him to be displaying unusual intelligence.

But Gisèle and Miramon were looking at each other, and
wondering: "What can the long-legged boy see in this stupid and
plain-featured girl who is years older than he? or she in the young
swaggering ragged fool? And how much wiser and happier is our
marriage than, in any event, the average marriage!"

And Miramon, for one, was so deeply moved by the staggering
thought which holds together so many couples in the teeth of human
nature that he patted his wife's hand. Then he sighed. "Love has
conquered my designs," said Miramon, oracularly, "and the secret of
a contented marriage, after all, is to pay particular attention to
the wives of everybody else."

Gisèle exhorted him not to be a fool, but she spoke
without acerbity, and, speaking, she squeezed his hand. She
understood this potent magician better than she intended ever to
permit him to suspect.

Whereafter Miramon wiped the heavenly bodies from the firmament,
and set a miraculous rainbow there, and under its arch was enacted
for the swineherd and the servant girl such a betrothal masque of
fantasies and illusions as gave full scope to the art of Miramon,
and delighted everybody, but delighted Miramon in particular. The
dragon that guards hidden treasure made sport for them, the naiads
danced, and cherubim fluttered about singing very sweetly and
asking droll conundrums. Then they feasted, with unearthly
servitors to attend them, and did all else appropriate to an
affiancing of deities. And when these junketings were over, Manuel
said that, since it seemed he was not to be a wealthy nobleman
after all, he and Niafer must be getting, first to the nearest
priest's and then back to the pigs.

"I am not so sure that you can manage it," said Miramon, "for,
while the ascent of Vraidex is incommoded by serpents, the quitting
of Vraidex is very apt to be hindered by death and fate. For I must
tell you I have a rather arbitrary half-brother, who is one of
those dreadful Realists, without a scrap of aesthetic feeling, and
there is no controlling him."

"Well," Manuel considered, "one cannot live forever among
dreams, and death and fate must be encountered by all men. So we
can but try."

Now for a while the sombre eyes of Miramon Lluagor appraised
them. He, who was lord of the nine sleeps and prince of the seven
madnesses, now gave a little sigh; for he knew that these young
people were enviable and, in the outcome, were unimportant.

So Miramon said, "Then do you go your way, and if you do not
encounter the author and destroyer of us all it will be well for
you, and if you do encounter him that too will be well in that it
is his wish."

"I neither seek nor avoid him," Manuel replied. "I only know
that I must follow after my own thinking, and after a desire which
is not to be satisfied with dreams, even though they be"—the
boy appeared to search for a comparison, then, smiling,
said,—"as resplendent as rubies of the Orient."

Thereafter Manuel bid farewell to Miramon and Miramon's fine
wife, and Manuel descended from marvelous Vraidex with his
plain-featured Niafer, quite contentedly. For happiness went with
them, if for no great way.

V

The Eternal Ambuscade

Manuel and Niafer came down from Vraidex without hindrance.
There was no happier nor more devoted lover anywhere than young
Manuel.

"For we will be married out of hand, dear snip," he says, "and
you will help me to discharge my geas, and afterward we will travel
everywhither and into the last limits of earth, so that we may see
the ends of this world and may judge them."

"Perhaps we had better wait until next spring, when the roads
will be better, Manuel, but certainly we will be married out of
hand."

In earnest of this, Niafer permitted Manuel to kiss her again,
and young Manuel said, for the twenty-second time, "There is
nowhere any happiness like my happiness, nor any love like my
love."

Thus speaking, and thus disporting themselves, they came
leisurely to the base of the gray mountain and to the old
maple-trees, under which they found two persons waiting. One was a
tall man mounted on a white horse, and leading a riderless black
horse. His hat was pulled down about his head so that his face
could not be clearly seen.

Now the companion that was with him had the appearance of a
bare-headed youngster, with dark red hair, and his face too was
hidden as he sat by the roadway trimming his long finger-nails with
a small green-handled knife.

"Hail, friends," said Manuel, "and for whom are you waiting
here?"

"I wait for one to ride on this black horse of mine," replied
the mounted stranger. "It was decreed that the first person who
passed this way must be his rider, but you two come abreast. So do
you choose between you which one rides."

"Well, but it is a fine steed surely," Manuel said, "and a steed
fit for Charlemagne or Hector or any of the famous champions of the
old time."

"Each one of them has ridden upon this black horse of mine,"
replied the stranger.

Niafer said, "I am frightened." And above them a furtive wind
began to rustle in the torn, discolored maple-leaves.

"—For it is a fine steed and an old steed," the stranger
went on, "and a tireless steed that bears all away. It has the
fault, some say, that its riders do not return, but there is no
pleasing everybody."

"Friend," Manuel said, in a changed voice, "who are you, and
what is your name?"

"I am half-brother to Miramon Lluagor, lord of the nine sleeps,
but I am lord of another kind of sleeping; and as for my name, it
is the name that is in your thoughts and the name which most
troubles you, and the name which you think about most often."

There was silence. Manuel worked his lips foolishly. "I wish we
had not walked abreast," he said. "I wish we had remained among the
bright dreams."

"All persons voice some regret or another at meeting me. And it
does not ever matter."

"But if there were no choosing in the affair, I could make shift
to endure it, either way. Now one of us, you tell me, must depart
with you. If I say, 'Let Niafer be that one,' I must always recall
that saying with self-loathing."

"But I too say it!" Niafer was petting him and trembling.

"Besides," observed the rider of the white horse, "you have a
choice of sayings."

"The other saying," Manuel replied, "I cannot utter. Yet I wish
I were not forced to confess this. It sounds badly. At all events,
I love Niafer better than I love any other person, but I do not
value Niafer's life more highly than I value my own life, and it
would be nonsense to say so. No; my life is very necessary to me,
and there is a geas upon me to make a figure in this world before I
leave it."

"My dearest," says Niafer, "you have chosen wisely."

The veiled horseman said nothing at all. But he took off his
hat, and the beholders shuddered. The kinship to Miramon was
apparent, you could see the resemblance, but they had never seen in
Miramon Lluagor's face what they saw here.

Then Niafer bade farewell to Manuel with pitiable whispered
words. They kissed. For an instant Manuel stood motionless. He
queerly moved his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying
to make it more supple. Thereafter Manuel, very sick and desperate
looking, did what was requisite. So Niafer went away with
Grandfather Death, in Manuel's stead.

"My heart cracks in me now," says Manuel, forlornly considering
his hands, "but better she than I. Still, this is a poor beginning
in life, for yesterday great wealth and to-day great love was
within my reach, and now I have lost both."

"But you did not go the right way about to win success in
anything," says the remaining stranger.

And now this other stranger arose from the trimming of his long
fingernails; and you could see this was a tall, lean youngster
(though not so tall as Manuel, and nothing like so stalwart), with
ruddy cheeks, wide-set brown eyes, and crinkling, rather dark red
hair.

Then Manuel rubbed his wet hands as clean as might be, and this
boy walked on a little way with Manuel, talking of that which had
been and of some things which were to be. And Manuel said, "Now
assuredly, Horvendile, since that is your name, such talking is
insane talking, and no comfort whatever to me in my grief at losing
Niafer."

"This is but the beginning of your losses, Manuel, for I think
that a little by a little you will lose everything which is
desirable, until you shall have remaining at the last only a
satiation, and a weariness, and an uneasy loathing of all that the
human wisdom of your elders shall have induced you to procure."

"But, Horvendile, can anybody foretell the future? Or can it be
that Miramon spoke seriously in saying that fate also was enleagued
to forbid the leaving of this mountain?"

"No, Manuel, I do not say that I am fate nor any of the
Léshy, but rather it seems to me that I am insane. So
perhaps the less attention you pay to my talking, the better. For I
must tell you that this wasted country side, this mountain, this
road, and these old maples, and that rock yonder, appear to me to
be things I have imagined, and that you, and the Niafer whom you
have just disposed of so untidily, and Miramon and his fair shrew,
and all of you, appear to me to be persons I have imagined; and all
the living in this world appears to me to be only a notion of
mine."

"Why, then, certainly I would say, or rather, I would think it
unnecessary to say, that you are insane."

"You speak without hesitation, and it is through your ability to
settle such whimseys out of hand that you will yet win, it may be,
to success."

"Yes, but," asked Manuel, slowly, "what is success?"

"In your deep mind, I think, that question is already
answered."

"Undoubtedly I have my notion, but it was about your notion I
was asking."

Horvendile looked grave, and yet whimsical too. "Why, I have
heard somewhere," says he, "that at its uttermost this success is
but the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at
climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail
representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home."

Manuel appeared to reserve judgment. "How does the successful
ape employ himself, in these not quite friendly places?"

"He strives blunderingly, from mystery to mystery, with pathetic
makeshifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and
honeycombed with poltroonery, and yet ready to give all, and to die
fighting for the sake of that undemonstrable idea, about his being
Heaven's vicar and heir."

Manuel shook his small bright head. "You use too many long
words. But so far I can understand you, that is not the sort of
success I want. No, I am Manuel, and I must follow after my own
thinking and my own desire, without considering other people and
their notions of success."

"As for denying yourself consideration for other people, I am of
the opinion, after witnessing your recent disposal of your
sweetheart, that you are already tolerably expert in that sort of
abnegation."

"Hah, but you do not know what is seething here," replied
Manuel, smiting his broad chest. "And I shall not tell you of it,
Horvendile, since you are not fate nor any of the Léshy, to
give me my desire."

"What would be your desire?"

"My wish would be for me always to obtain whatever I may wish
for. Yes, Horvendile, I have often wondered why, in the old
legends, when three wishes were being offered, nobody ever made
that sensible and economical wish the first of all."

"What need is there to trouble the Léshy about that
foolish wish when it is always possible, at a paid price, to obtain
whatever one desires? You have but to go about it in this way." And
Horvendile told Manuel a queer and dangerous thing. Then Horvendile
said sadly: "So much knowledge I can deny nobody at Michaelmas. But
I must tell you the price also, and it is that with the achieving
of each desire you will perceive its worth."

Thus speaking, Horvendile parted the thicket beside the roadway.
A beautiful dusk-colored woman waited there, in a green-blue robe,
and on her head was a blue coronet surmounted with green feathers:
she carried a vase. Horvendile stepped forward, and the thicket
closed behind him, concealing Horvendile and this woman.

Manuel, looking puzzled, went on a little way, and when he was
assured of being alone he flung himself face downward and wept. The
reason of this was, they relate, that young Manuel had loved Niafer
as he could love nobody else. Then he arose, and went toward the
pool of Haranton, on his way homeward, after having failed in
everything.

VI

Economics of Math

What forthwith happened at the pool of Haranton is not nicely
adapted to exact description, but it was sufficiently curious to
give Manuel's thoughts a new turn, although it did not seem, even
so, to make them happy thoughts. Certainly it was not with any
appearance of merriment that Manuel returned to his half-sister
Math, who was the miller's wife.

"And wherever have you been all this week?" says Math, "with the
pigs rooting all over creation, and with that man of mine forever
flinging your worthlessness in my face, and with that red-haired
Suskind coming out of the twilight a-seeking after you every
evening and pestering me with her soft lamentations? And for the
matter of that, whatever are you glooming over?"

"I have cause, and cause to spare."

Manuel told her of his adventures upon Vraidex, and Math said
that showed what came of neglecting his proper business, which was
attendance on her husband's pigs. Manuel then told her of what had
just befallen by the pool of Haranton.

Math nodded. "Take shame to yourself, young rascal with your
Niafer hardly settled down in paradise, and with your Suskind
wailing for you in the twilight! But that would be Alianora the
Unattainable Princess. Thus she comes across the Bay of Biscay,
traveling from the far land of Provence, in, they say, the
appearance of a swan: and thus she bathes in the pool wherein
strange dreams engender: and thus she slips into the robe of the
Apsarasas when it is high time to be leaving such impudent knaves
as you have proved yourself to be."

"Yes, yes! a shift made all of shining white feathers, Sister.
Here is a feather that was broken from it as I clutched at
her."

Math turned the feather in her hand. "Now to be sure! and did
you ever see the like of it! Still, a broken feather is no good to
anybody, and, as I have told you any number of times, I cannot have
trash littering up my kitchen."

So Math dropped this shining white feather into the fire, on
which she was warming over a pot of soup for Manuel's dinner, and
they watched this feather burn.

Manuel says, sighing, "Even so my days consume, and my youth
goes out of me, in a land wherein Suskind whispers of uncomfortable
things, and wherein there are no maids so clever and dear as
Niafer, nor so lovely as Alianora."

Math said: "I never held with speaking ill of the dead. So may
luck and fair words go with your Niafer in her pagan paradise. Of
your Suskind too"—Math crossed herself,—"the less said,
the better. But as for your Alianora, no really nice girl would be
flying in the face of heaven and showing her ankles to five
nations, and bathing, on a Monday too, in places where almost
anybody might come along. It is not proper, but I wonder at her
parents."

"But, Sister, she is a princess!"

"Just so: therefore I burned the feather, because it is not
wholesome for persons of our station in life to be robbing
princesses of anything, though it be only of a feather."

"Sister, that is the truth! It is not right to rob anybody of
anything, and this would appear to make another bond upon me and
another obligation to be discharged, because in taking that feather
I have taken what did not belong to me."

"Boy, do not think you are fooling me, for when your face gets
that look on it, I know you are considering some nonsense over and
above the nonsense you are talking. However, from your description
of the affair, I do not doubt that gallivanting, stark-naked
princess thought you were for taking what did not belong to you.
Therefore I burned the feather, lest it be recognized and bring you
to the gallows or to a worse place. So why did you not scrape your
feet before coming into my clean kitchen? and how many times do you
expect me to speak to you about that?"

Manuel said nothing. But he seemed to meditate over something
that puzzled him. In the upshot he went into the miller's
chicken-yard, and caught a goose, and plucked from its wing a
feather.

Then Manuel put on his Sunday clothes.

"Far too good for you to be traveling in," said Math.

Manuel looked down at his half-sister, and once or twice he
blinked those shining strange eyes of his. "Sister, if I had been
properly dressed when I was master of the doubtful palace, the Lady
Gisèle would have taken me quite seriously. I have been
thinking about her observations as to my elbows."

"The coat does not make the man," replied Math piously.

"It is your belief in any such saying that has made a miller's
wife of you, and will keep you a miller's wife until the end of
time. Now I learned better from my misadventures upon Vraidex, and
from my talking with that insane Horvendile about the things which
have been and some things which are to be."

Math, who was a wise woman, said queerly, "I perceive that you
are letting your hair grow."

Manuel said, "Yes."

"Boy, fast and loose is a mischancy game to play."

"And being born, also, is a most hazardous speculation, Sister,
yet we perforce risk all upon that cast."

"Now you talk stuff and nonsense—"

"Yes, Sister; but I begin to suspect that the right sort of
stuff and nonsense is not unremunerative. I may be wrong, but I
shall afford my notion a testing."

"And after what shiftless idiocy will you be chasing now, to
neglect your work?"

"Why, as always, Sister, I must follow my own thinking and my
own desire," says Manuel, lordlily, "and both of these are for a
flight above pigs."

Thereafter Manuel kissed Math, and, again without taking leave
of Suskind in the twilight, or of anyone else, he set forth for the
far land of Provence.

VII

The Crown of Wisdom

So did it come about that as King Helmas rode a-hunting in Nevet
under the Hunter's Moon he came upon a gigantic and florid young
fellow, who was very decently clad in black, and had a queer droop
to his left eye, and who appeared to be wandering at adventure in
the autumn woods: and the King remembered what had been
foretold.

Says King Helmas to Manuel the swineherd, "What is that I see in
your pocket wrapped in red silk?"

"It is a feather, King, wrapped in a bit of my sister's best
petticoat"

"Now, glory be to your dark magics, friend, and at what price
will you sell me that feather?"

"But a feather is no use to anybody, King, for, as you see, it
is a quite ordinary feather?"

"Come, come!" the King says, shrewdly, "do people anywhere wrap
ordinary feathers in red silk? Friend, do not think to deceive King
Helmas of Albania, or it will be worse for you. I perfectly
recognize that shining white feather as the feather which was
moulted in this forest by the Zhar-Ptitza Bird, in the old time
before my grandfathers came into this country. For it was foretold
that such a young sorcerer as you would bring to me, who have long
been the silliest King that ever reigned over the Peohtes, this
feather which confers upon its owner perfect wisdom: and for you to
dispute the prophecy would be blasphemous."

"I do not dispute your silliness, King Helmas, nor do I dispute
anybody's prophecies in a world wherein nothing is certain."

"One thing at least is certain," remarked King Helmas, frowning
uglily, "and it is that among the Peohtes all persons who dispute
our prophecies are burned at the stake."

Manuel shivered slightly, and said: "It seems to me a quite
ordinary feather: but your prophets—most deservedly, no
doubt,—are in higher repute for wisdom than I am, and burning
is a discomfortable death. So I recall what a madman told me, and,
since you are assured that this is the Zhar-Ptitza's feather, I
will sell it to you for ten sequins."

King Helmas shook a disapproving face. "That will not do at all,
and your price is out of reason, because it was foretold that for
this feather you would ask ten thousand sequins."

"Well, I am particularly desirous not to appear irreligious now
that I have become a young sorcerer. So you may have the feather at
your own price, rather than let the prophecies remain
unfulfilled."

Then Manuel rode pillion with a king who was unwilling to let
Manuel out of his sight, and they went thus to the castle called
Brunbelois. They came to two doors with pointed arches, set side by
side, the smaller being for foot passengers, and the other for
horsemen. Above was an equestrian statue in a niche, and a great
painted window with traceries of hearts and thistles.

They entered the larger door, and that afternoon twelve heralds,
in bright red tabards that were embroidered with golden thistles,
rode out of this door, to proclaim the fulfilment of the prophecy
as to the Zhar-Ptitza's feather, and that afternoon the priests of
the Peohtes gave thanks in all their curious underground temples.
The common people, who had for the last score of years taken shame
to themselves for living under such a foolish king, embraced one
another, and danced, and sang patriotic songs at every
street-corner: the Lower Council met, and voted that, out of
deference of his majesty, All Fools' Day should be stricken from
the calendar: and Queen Pressina (one of the water folk) declared
there were two ways of looking at everything, the while that she
burned a quantity of private papers. Then at night were fireworks,
the King made a speech, and to Manuel was delivered in
wheel-barrows the sum of ten thousand sequins.

Thereafter Manuel abode for a month at the court of King Helmas,
noting whatever to this side and to that side seemed most notable.
Manuel was well liked by the nobility, and when the barons and the
fine ladies assembled in the evening for pavanes and branles and
pazzamenos nobody danced more statelily than Messire Manuel. He had
a quiet way with the ladies, and with the barons a way of
simplicity which was vastly admired in a sorcerer so potent that
his magic had secured the long sought Zhar-Ptitza's feather. "But
the most learned," as King Helmas justly said, "are always the most
modest."

Helmas now wore the feather from the wing of the miller's goose
affixed to the front of Helmas' second best crown, because that was
the one he used to give judgments in. And when it was noised abroad
that King Helmas had the Zhar-Ptitza's feather, the Peohtes came
gladly to be judged, and the neighboring kings began to submit to
him their more difficult cases, and all his judgings were received
with reverence, because everybody knew that King Helmas' wisdom was
now infallible, and that to criticize his verdict as to anything
was merely to expose your own stupidity.

And now that doubt of himself had gone out of his mind, Helmas
lived untroubled, and his digestion improved, and his
loving-kindness was infinite, because he could not be angry with
the pitiable creatures haled before him, when he considered how
little able they were to distinguish between wisdom and unwisdom
where Helmas was omniscient: and all his doings were merciful and
just, and his people praised him. Even the Queen conceded that,
once you were accustomed to his ways, and exercised some firmness
about being made a doormat of, and had it understood once for all
that meals could not be kept waiting for him, she supposed there
might be women worse off.

And Manuel got clay and modeled the figure of a young man which
had the features and the wise look of King Helmas.

"I can see the resemblance," the King said, "but it does not
half do me justice, and, besides, why have you made a young
whipper-snapper of me, and mixed up my appearance with your
appearance?"

"I do not know," said Manuel, "but I suppose it is because of a
geas which is upon me to make myself a splendid and admirable young
man in every respect, and not an old man."

"And does the sculpture satisfy you?" asks the King, smiling
wisely.

"No, I like this figure well enough, now it is done, but it is
not, I somehow know, the figure I desire to make. No, I must follow
after my own thinking and my own desire, and wisdom is not
requisite to me."

"You artists!" said the King, as people always say that "Now I
would consider that, for all the might of your sorceries, wisdom is
rather clamantly requisite to you, Messire Manuel, who inform me
you must soon be riding hence to find elsewhere the needful look
for your figure. For thus to be riding about this world of men, in
search of a shade of expression, and without even being certain of
what look you are looking for, does not appear to me to be good
sense."

But young Manuel replied sturdily:

"I ride to encounter what life has in store for me, who am made
certain of this at least, that all high harvests which life
withholds for me spring from a seed which I sow—and reap. For
my geas is potent, and, late or soon, I serve my geas, and take my
doom as the pay well-earned that is given as pay to me, for the
figure I make in this world of men.

"This figure, foreseen and yet hidden away from me, glimpsed
from afar in the light of a dream,—will I love it, once more,
or will loathing awake in me after its visage is plainlier seen? No
matter: as fate says, so say I, who serve my geas, and gain in time
such payment, at worst, as is honestly due to me, for the figure I
make in this world of men.

"To its shaping I consecrate youth that is strong in me,
ardently yielding youth's last least gift, who know that all grace
which the gods have allotted me avails me in naught if it fails me
in this. For all that a man has, that must I bring to the image I
shape, that my making may live when time unmakes me and death
dissevers me from the figure I make in this world of men."

To this the King rather drily replied: "There is something in
what you say. But that something is, I can assure you, not
wisdom."

So everyone was satisfied in Albania except Manuel, who declared
that he was pleased but not contented by the image he had made in
the likeness of King Helmas.

"Besides," they told him, "you look as though your mind were
troubling you about something."

"In fact, I am puzzled to see a foolish person made wise in all
his deeds and speeches by this wisdom being expected of him."

"But that is a cause for rejoicing, and for applauding the might
of your sorceries, Messire Manuel, whereas you are plainly thinking
of vexatious matters."

Manuel replied, "I think that it is not right to rob anybody of
anything, and I reflect that wisdom weighs exactly the weight of a
feather."

Then Manuel went into King Helmas' chickenyard, and caught a
goose, and plucked from its wing a feather. Manuel went
glitteringly now, in brocaded hose, and with gold spurs on his
heels: the figure which he had made in the likeness of King Helmas
was packed in an expensive knapsack of ornamented leather, and tall
shining Manuel rode on a tall dappled horse when he departed
southward, for Manuel nowadays had money to spare.

VIII

The Halo of Holiness

Now Manuel takes ship across the fretful Bay of Biscay,
traveling always toward Provence and Alianora, whom people called
the Unattainable Princess. Oriander the Swimmer followed this ship,
they say, but he attempted to do Manuel no hurt, at least not for
that turn.

So Manuel of the high head comes into the country of wicked King
Ferdinand; and, toward All-Hallows, they bring a stupendous florid
young man to the King in the torture-chamber. King Ferdinand was
not idle at the moment, and he looked up good-temperedly enough
from his employment: but almost instantly his merry face was
overcast.

"Dear me!" says Ferdinand, as he dropped his white hot pincers
sizzlingly into a jar of water, "and I had hoped you would not be
bothering me for a good ten years!"

"Now if I bother you at all it is against my will," declared
Manuel, very politely, "nor do I willingly intrude upon you here,
for, without criticizing anybody's domestic arrangements, there are
one or two things that I do not fancy the looks of in this
torture-chamber."

"That is as it may be. In the mean time, what is that I see in
your pocket wrapped in red silk?"

"It is a feather, King, wrapped in a bit of my sister's best
petticoat."

Then Ferdinand sighed, and he arose from his interesting
experiments with what was left of the Marquess de Henestrosa, to
whom the King had taken a sudden dislike that morning.

"Tut, tut!" said Ferdinand: "yet, after all, I have had a brave
time of it, with my enormities and my iniquities, and it is not as
though there were nothing to look back on! So at what price will
you sell me that feather?"

"But surely a feather is no use to anybody, King, for does it
not seem to you a quite ordinary feather?"

"Come!" says King Ferdinand, as he washed his hands, "do people
anywhere wrap ordinary feathers in red silk? You squinting rascal,
do not think to swindle me out of eternal bliss by any such foolish
talk! I perfectly recognize that feather as the feather which
Milcah plucked from the left pinion of the Archangel Oriphiel when
the sons of God were on more intricate and scandalous terms with
the daughters of men than are permitted nowadays."

"Well, sir," replied Manuel, "you may be right in a world
wherein nothing is certain. At all events, I have deduced, from one
to two things in this torture-chamber, that it is better not to
argue with King Ferdinand."

"How can I help being right, when it was foretold long ago that
such a divine emissary as you would bring this very holy relic to
turn me from my sins and make a saint of me?" says Ferdinand,
peevishly.

"It appears to me a quite ordinary feather, King: but I recall
what a madman told me, and I do not dispute that your prophets are
wiser than I, for I have been a divine emissary for only a short
while."

"Do you name your price for this feather, then!"

"I think it would be more respectful, sir, to refer you to the
prophets, for I find them generous and big-hearted creatures."

Ferdinand nodded his approval. "That is very piously spoken,
because it was prophesied that this relic would be given me for no
price at all by a great nobleman. So I must forthwith write out for
you a count's commission, I suppose, and must write out your grants
to fertile lands and a stout castle or two, and must date your
title to these things from yesterday."

"Certainly," said Manuel, "it would not look well for you to be
neglecting due respect to such a famous prophecy, with that bottle
of ink at your elbow."

So King Ferdinand sent for the Count of Poictesme, and explained
to him as between old friends how the matter stood, and that
afternoon the high Count was confessed and decapitated. Poictesme
being now a vacant fief, King Ferdinand ennobled Manuel, and made
him Count of Poictesme.

It was true that all Poictesme was then held by the Northmen,
under Duke Asmund, who denied King Ferdinand's authority with
contempt, and defeated him in battle with annoying persistence: so
that Manuel for the present acquired nothing but the sonorous
title.

"Some terrible calamity, however," as King Ferdinand pointed
out, "is sure to befall Asmund and his iniquitous followers before
very long, so we need not bother about them."

"But how may I be certain of that, sir?" Manuel asked.

"Count, I am surprised at such scepticism! Is it not very
explicitly stated in Holy Writ that though the wicked may flourish
for a while they are presently felled like green bay-trees?"

"Yes, to be sure! So there is no doubt that your soldiers will
soon conquer Duke Asmund."

"But I must not send any soldiers to fight against him, now that
I am a saint, for that would not look well. It would have an
irreligious appearance of prompting Heaven."

"Still, King, you are sending soldiers against the
Moors—"

"Ah, but it is not your lands, Count, but my city of Ubeda,
which the Moors are attacking, and to attack a saint, as you must
undoubtedly understand, is a dangerous heresy which it is my duty
to put down."

"Yes, to be sure! Well, well!" says Manuel, "at any rate, to be
a count is something, and it is better to ward a fine name than a
parcel of pigs, though it appears the pigs are the more
nourishing."

In the mean while the King's heralds rode everywhither in fluted
armor, to proclaim the fulfilment of the old prophecy as to the
Archangel Oriphiel's feather. Never before was there such a hubbub
in those parts, for the bells of all the churches sounded all day,
and all the people ran about praying at the top of their voices,
and forgiving their relatives, and kissing the girls, and blowing
whistles and ringing cowbells, because the city now harbored a
relic so holy that the vilest sinner had but to touch it to be
purified of iniquity.

And that day King Ferdinand dismissed the evil companions with
whom he had so long rioted in every manner of wickedness, and
Ferdinand lived henceforward as became a saint. He builded two
churches a year, and fared edifyingly on roots and herbs; he washed
the feet of three indigent persons daily, and went in sackcloth;
whenever he burned heretics he fetched and piled up the wood
himself, so as to inconvenience nobody; and he made prioresses and
abbesses of his more intimate and personal associates of yesterday,
because he knew that people are made holy by contact with holiness,
and that sainthood is retroactive.

Thereafter Count Manuel abode for a month at the court of King
Ferdinand, noting whatever to this side and to that side seemed
most notable. Manuel was generally liked by the elect, and in the
evening when the court assembled for family-prayers nobody was more
devout than the Count of Poictesme. He had a quiet way with the
abbesses and prioresses, and with the anchorites and bishops a way
of simplicity which was vastly admired in a divine emissary. "But
the particular favor of Heaven," as King Ferdinand pointed out, "is
always reserved for modest persons."

The feather from the wing of Helmas' goose King Ferdinand had
caused to be affixed to the unassuming skullcap with a halo of gold
wire which Ferdinand now wore in the place of a vainglorious
earthly crown; so that perpetual contiguity with this relic might
keep him in augmenting sanctity. And now that doubt of himself had
gone out of his mind, Ferdinand lived untroubled, and his digestion
improved on his light diet of roots and herbs, and his
loving-kindness was infinite, because he could not now be angry
with the pitiable creatures haled before him, when he considered
what lengthy and ingenious torments awaited every one of them,
either in hell or purgatory, while Ferdinand would be playing a
gold harp in heaven.

So Ferdinand dealt tenderly and generously with all. Half of his
subjects said that simply showed you: and the rest of them assented
that indeed you might well say that, and they had often thought of
it, and had wished that young people would take profit by
considering such things more seriously.

And Manuel got clay and modeled a figure which had the features
and the holy look of King Ferdinand.

"Yes, this young fellow you have made of mud is something like
me," the King conceded, "although clay of course cannot do justice
to the fine red cheeks and nose I used to have in the unregenerate
days when I thought about such vanities, and, besides, it is rather
more like you. Still, Count, the thing has feeling, it is
wholesome, it is refreshingly free from these modern morbid
considerations of anatomy, and it does you credit."

"No, King, I like this figure well enough, now that it is done,
but it is not, I somehow know, the figure I desire to make. No, I
must follow after my own thinking and my own desires, and I do not
need holiness."

"You artists!" the King said. "But there is more than mud upon
your mind."

"In fact, I am puzzled, King, to see you made a saint of by its
being expected of you."

"But, Count, that ought to grieve nobody, so long as I do not
complain, and it is of something graver you are thinking."

"I think, sir, that it is not right to rob anybody of anything,
and I reflect that absolute righteousness is a fine feather in
one's cap."

Then Manuel went into the chicken-yard behind the red-roofed
palace of King Ferdinand, and caught a goose, and plucked from its
wing a feather. Thereafter the florid young Count of Poictesme rode
east, on a tall dappled horse, and a retinue of six lackeys in
silver and black liveries came cantering after him, and the two
foremost lackeys carried in knapsacks, marked with a gold coronet,
the images which Dom Manuel had made. A third lackey carried Dom
Manuel's shield, upon which were emblazoned the arms of Poictesme.
The black shield displayed a silver stallion which was rampant in
every member and was bridled with gold, but the ancient arms had
been given a new motto.

"What means this Greek?" Dom Manuel had asked.

"Mundus decipit, Count," they told him, "is the old pious
motto of Poictesme: it signifies that the affairs of this world are
a vain fleeting show, and that terrestrial appearances are nowhere
of any particular importance."

"Then your motto is green inexperience," said Manuel, "and for
me to bear it would be black ingratitude."

So the writing had been changed in accordance with his
instructions, and it now read Mundus vult decipi.

IX

The Feather of Love

In such estate it was that Count Manuel came, on Christmas
morning, just two days after Manuel was twenty-one, into Provence.
This land, reputed sorcerous, in no way displayed to him any
unusual features, though it was noticeable that the King's
marmoreal palace was fenced with silver pikes whereon were set the
embalmed heads of young men who had wooed the Princess Alianora
unsuccessfully. Manuel's lackeys did not at first like the looks of
these heads, and said they were unsuitable for Christmas
decorations: but Dom Manuel explained that at this season of
general merriment this palisade also was mirth-provoking because
(the weather being such as was virtually unprecedented in these
parts) a light snow had fallen during the night, so that each head
seemed to wear a nightcap.

They bring Manuel to Raymond Bérenger, Count of Provence
and King of Aries, who was holding the Christmas feast in his warm
hall. Raymond sat on a fine throne of carved white ivory and gold,
beneath a purple canopy. And beside him, upon just such another
throne, not quite so high, sat Raymond's daughter, Alianora the
Unattainable Princess, in a robe of watered silk which was of seven
colors and was lined with the dark fur of barbiolets. In her crown
were chrysolites and amethysts: it was a wonder to note how
brightly they shone, but they were not so bright as Alianora's
eyes.

She stared as Manuel of the high head came through the hall,
wherein the barons were seated according to their degrees. She had,
they say, four reasons for remembering the impudent, huge,
squinting, yellow-haired young fellow whom she had encountered at
the pool of Haranton. She blushed, and spoke with her father in the
whistling and hissing language which the Apsarasas use among
themselves: and her father laughed long and loud.

Says Raymond Bérenger: "Things might have fallen out much
worse. Come tell me now, Count of Poictesme, what is that I see in
your breast pocket wrapped in red silk?"

"It is a feather, King," replied Manuel, a little wearily,
"wrapped in a bit of my sister's best petticoat."

"Ay, ay," says Raymond Bérenger, with a grin that was
becoming even more benevolent, "and I need not ask what price you
come expecting for that feather. None the less, you are an
excellently spoken-of young wizard of noble condition, who have
slain no doubt a reasonable number of giants and dragons, and who
have certainly turned kings from folly and wickedness. For such
fine rumors speed before the man who has fine deeds behind him that
you do not come into my realm as a stranger: and, I repeat, things
might have fallen out much worse."

"Now listen, all ye that hold Christmas here!" cried Manuel "A
while back I robbed this Princess of a feather, and the thought of
it lay in my mind more heavy than a feather, because I had taken
what did not belong to me. So a bond was on me, and I set out
toward Provence to restore to her a feather. And such happenings
befell me by the way that at Michaelmas I brought wisdom into one
realm, and at All-Hallows I brought piety into another realm. Now
what I may be bringing into this realm of yours at Heaven's most
holy season, Heaven only knows. To the eye it may seem a quite
ordinary feather. Yet life in the wide world, I find, is a queerer
thing than ever any swineherd dreamed of in his wattled hut, and
people everywhere are nourished by their beliefs, in a way that the
meat of pigs can nourish nobody."

Raymond Bérenger said, with a wise nod: "I perceive what
is in your heart, and I see likewise what is in your pocket. So why
do you tell me what everybody knows? Everybody knows that the robe
of the Apsarasas, which is the peculiar treasure of Provence, has
been ruined by the loss of a feather, so that my daughter can no
longer go abroad in the appearance of a swan, because the robe is
not able to work any more wonders until that feather in your pocket
has been sewed back into the robe with the old incantation."

"Now, but indeed does everybody know that!" says Manuel.

"—Everybody knows, too, that my daughter has pined away
with fretting after her lost ways of outdoor exercise, and the
healthful changes of air which she used to be having. And finally,
everybody knows that, at my daughter's very sensible suggestion, I
have offered my daughter's hand in marriage to him who would
restore that feather, and death to every impudent young fellow who
dared enter here without it, as my palace fence attests."

"Oh, oh!" says Manuel, smiling, "but seemingly it is no
wholesome adventure which has come to me unsought!"

"—So, as you tell me, you came into Provence: and, as
there is no need to tell me, I hope, who have still two eyes in my
head, you have achieved the adventure. And why do you keep telling
me about matters with which I am as well acquainted as you
are?"

"But, King of Arles, how do you know that this is not an
ordinary feather?"

"Count of Poictesme, do people anywhere—?"

"Oh, spare me that vile bit of worldly logic, sir, and I will
concede whatever you desire!"

"Then do you stop talking such nonsense, and do you stop telling
me about things that everybody knows, and do you give my daughter
her feather!"

Manuel ascends the white throne of Alianora. "Queer things have
befallen me," said Manuel, "but nothing more strange than this can
ever happen, than that I should be standing here with you, and
holding this small hand in mine. You are not perhaps quite so
beautiful nor so clever as Niafer. Nevertheless, you are the
Unattainable Princess, whose loveliness recalled me from vain
grieving after Niafer, within a half-hour of Niafer's loss. Yes,
you are she whose beauty kindled a dream and a dissatisfaction in
the heart of a swineherd, to lead him forth into the wide world,
and through the puzzling ways of the wide world, and into its high
places: so that at the last the swineherd is
standing—a-glitter in satin and gold and in rich
furs,—here at the summit of a throne; and at the last the
hand of the Unattainable Princess is in his hand, and in his heart
is misery."

The Princess said, "I do not know anything about this Niafer,
who was probably no better than she should have been, nor do I know
of any conceivable reason for your being miserable."

"Why, is it not the truth," asks Manuel of Alianora, speaking
not very steadily, "that you are to marry the man who restores the
feather of which you were robbed at the pool of Haranton? and can
marry none other?"

"It is the truth," she answered, in a small frightened lovely
voice, "and I no longer grieve that it is the truth, and I think it
a most impolite reason for your being miserable."

Manuel laughed without ardor. "See how we live and learn! I
recall now the droll credulity of a lad who watched a shining
feather burned, while he sat within arm's reach thinking about
cabbage soup, because his grave elders assured him that a feather
could never be of any use to anybody. And that, too, after he had
seen what uses may be made of an old bridle or of a duck egg or of
anything! Well, but all water that is past the dam must go its way,
even though it be a flood of tears—"

Here Manuel gently shrugged broad shoulders. He took out of his
pocket the feather he had plucked from the wing of Ferdinand's
goose.

He said: "A feather I took from you in the red autumn woods, and
a feather I now restore to you, my Princess, in this white palace
of yours, not asking any reward, and not claiming to be remembered
by you in the gray years to come, but striving to leave no
obligation undischarged and no debt unpaid. And whether in this
world wherein nothing is certain, one feather is better than
another feather, I do not know. It well may come about that I must
straightway take a foul doom from fair lips, and that presently my
head will be drying on a silver pike. Even so, one never knows: and
I have learned that it is well to put all doubt of oneself quite
out of mind."

He gave her the feather he had plucked from the third goose, and
the trumpets sounded as a token that the quest of Alianora's
feather had been fulfilled, and all the courtiers shouted in honor
of Count Manuel.

Alianora looked at what was in her hand, and saw it was a
goose-feather, in nothing resembling the feather which, when she
had fled in maidenly embarrassment from Manuel's over-friendly
advances, she had plucked from the robe of the Apsarasas, and had
dropped at Manuel's feet, in order that her father might be forced
to proclaim this quest, and the winning of it might be
predetermined.

Then Alianora looked at Manuel. Now before her the queer unequal
eyes of this big young man were bright and steadfast as altar
candles. His chin was well up, and it seemed to her that this fine
young fellow expected her to declare the truth, when the truth
would be his death-sentence. She had no patience with his
nonsense.

Says Alianora, with that lovely tranquil smile of hers: "Count
Manuel has fulfilled the quest. He has restored to me the feather
from the robe of the Apsarasas. I recognize it perfectly."

"Why, to be sure," says Raymond Bérenger. "Still, do you
get your needle and the recipe for the old incantation, and the
robe too, and make it plain to all my barons that the power of the
robe is returned to it, by flying about the hall a little in the
appearance of a swan. For it is better to conduct these affairs in
due order and without any suspicion of irregularity."

Now matters looked ticklish for Dom Manuel, since he and
Alianora knew that the robe had been spoiled, and that the addition
of any number of goose-feathers was not going to turn Alianora into
a swan. Yet the boy's handsome and high-colored face stayed
courteously attentive to the wishes of his host, and did not
change.

But Alianora said indignantly: "My father, I am surprised at
you! Have you no sense of decency at all? You ought to know it is
not becoming for an engaged girl to be flying about Provence in the
appearance of a swan, far less among a parcel of men who have been
drinking all morning. It is the sort of thing that leads to a
girl's being talked about."

"Now, that is true, my dear," said Raymond Bérenger,
abashed, "and the sentiment does you credit. So perhaps I had
better suggest something else—"

"Indeed, my father, I see exactly what you would be suggesting.
And I believe you are right."

"I am not infallible, my dear: but still—"

"Yes, you are perfectly right: it is not well for any married
woman to be known to possess any such robe. There is no telling,
just as you say, what people would be whispering about her, nor
what disgraceful tricks she would get the credit of playing on her
husband."

"My daughter, I was only about to tell you—"

"Yes, and you put it quite unanswerably. For you, who have the
name of being the wisest Count that ever reigned in Provence, and
the shrewdest King that Arles has ever had, know perfectly well how
people talk, and how eager people are to talk, and to place the
very worst construction on everything: and you know, too, that
husbands do not like such talk. Certainly I had not thought of
these things, my father, but I believe that you are right."

Raymond Bérenger stroked his thick short beard, and said:
"Now truly, my daughter, whether or not I be wise and
shrewd—though, as you say, of course there have been persons
kind enough to consider—and in petitions too—However,
be that as it may, and putting aside the fact that everybody likes
to be appreciated, I must confess I can imagine no gift which would
at this high season be more acceptable to any husband than the
ashes of that robe."

"This is a saying," Alianora here declares, "well worthy of
Raymond Bérenger: and I have often wondered at your striking
way of putting things."

"That, too, is a gift," the King-Count said, with proper
modesty, "which to some persons is given, and to others not: so I
deserve no credit for it. But, as I was saying when you interrupted
me, my dear, it is well for youth to have its fling, because (as I
have often thought) we are young only once: and so I have not ever
criticized your jauntings in far lands. But a husband is another
pair of sandals. A husband does not like to have his wife flying
about the tree tops and the tall lonely mountains and the low long
marshes, with nobody to keep an eye on her, and that is the truth
of it. So, were I in your place, and wise enough to listen to the
old father who loves you, and who is wiser than you, my
dear—why, now that you are about to marry, I repeat to you
with all possible earnestness, my darling, I would destroy this
feather and this robe in one red fire, if only Count Manuel will
agree to it. For it is he who now has power over all your
possessions, and not I."

"Count Manuel," says Alianora, with that lovely tranquil smile
of hers, "you perceive that my father is insistent, and it is my
duty to be guided by him. I do not deny that, upon my father's
advice, I am asking you to let perish a strong magic which many
persons would value above a woman's pleading. But I know
now"—her eyes met his, and to any young man anywhere with a
heart moving in him, that which Manuel could see in the bright
frightened eyes of Alianora could not but be a joy well-nigh
intolerable,—"but I know now that you, who are to be my
husband, and who have brought wisdom into one kingdom, and piety
into another, have brought love into the third kingdom: and I
perceive that this third magic is a stronger and a nobler magic
than that of the Apsarasas. And it seems to me that you and I would
do well to dispense with anything which is second rate."

"I am of the opinion that you are a singularly intelligent young
woman," says Manuel, "and I am of the belief that it is far too
early for me to be crossing my wife's wishes, in a world wherein
all men are nourished by their beliefs."

All being agreed, the Yule-log was stirred up into a blaze,
which was duly fed with the goose-feather and the robe of the
Apsarasas. Thereafter the trumpets sounded a fanfare, to proclaim
that Raymond Bérenger's collops were cooked and peppered,
his wine casks broached, and his puddings steaming. Then the former
swineherd went in to share his Christmas dinner with the
King-Count's daughter, Alianora, whom people everywhere had called
the Unattainable Princess.

And they relate that while Alianora and Manuel sat cosily in the
hood of the fireplace and cracked walnuts, and in the pauses of
their talking noted how the snow was drifting by the windows, the
ghost of Niafer went restlessly about green fields beneath an ever
radiant sky in the paradise of the pagans. When the kindly
great-browed warders asked her what it was she was seeking, the
troubled spirit could not tell them, for Niafer had tasted Lethe,
and had forgotten Dom Manuel. Only her love for him had not been
forgotten, because that love had become a part of her, and so lived
on as a blind longing and as a desire which did not know its aim.
And they relate also that in Suskind's low red-pillared palace
Suskind waited with an old thought for company.

PART TWO

THE BOOK OF SPENDING

TO

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Often tymes herde Manuel tell of the fayrness of this Queene
of Furies and Gobblins and Hydraes, insomuch
that he was enamoured of hyr, though he neuer sawe hyr: then by
this Connynge made he a Hole in the fyer, and went ouer to hyr, and
when he had spoke with hyr, he shewed hyr his mynde.

X

Alianora

They of Poictesme narrate that after dinner King Raymond sent
messengers to his wife, who was spending that Christmas with their
daughter, Queen Meregrett of France, to bid Dame Beatrice return as
soon as might be convenient, so that they might marry off their
daughter Alianora to the famous Count Manuel. They tell also how
the holiday season passed with every manner of festivity, and how
Dom Manuel got on splendidly with his Princess, and how it appeared
to onlookers that for both of them, even for the vaguely
condescending boy, love-making proved a very marvelous and dear
pursuit.

Dom Manuel confessed, in reply to jealous questionings, that he
did not think Alianora quite so beautiful nor so clever as Niafer
had been, but this, as Manuel pointed out, was hardly a matter
which could be remedied. At all events, the Princess was a
fine-looking and intelligent girl, as Dom Manuel freely conceded to
her: and the magic of the Apsarasas, in which she was instructing
him, Dom Manuel declared to be very interesting if you cared for
that sort of thing.

The Princess humbly admitted, in reply, that of course her magic
did not compare with his, since hers was powerful only over the
bodies of men and beasts, whereas Dom Manuel's magic had so notably
controlled the hearts and minds of kings. Still, as Alianora
pointed out, she could blight corn and cattle, and raise tempests
very handily, and, given time, could smite an enemy with almost any
physical malady you selected. She could not kill outright, to be
sure, but even so, these lesser mischiefs were not despicable
accomplishments in a young girl. Anyhow, she said in peroration, it
was atrocious to discourage her by laughing at the best she could
do.

"Ah, but come now, my dear," says Manuel, "I was only teasing. I
really think your work most promising. You have but to continue.
Practise, that is the thing, they say, in all the arts."

"Yes, and with you to help me—"

"No, I have graver matters to attend to than devil-mongering,"
says Manuel, "and a bond to lift from myself before I can lay
miseries on others."

For because of the geas that was on him to make a figure in the
world, Dom Manuel had unpacked his two images, and after vexedly
considering them, he had fallen again to modeling in clay, and had
made a third image. This image also was in the likeness of a young
man, but it had the fine proud features and the loving look of
Alianora.

Manuel confessed to being fairly well pleased with this figure,
but even so, he did not quite recognize in it the figure he desired
to make, and therefore, he said, he deduced that love was not the
thing which was essential to him.

Alianora did not like the image at all.

"To have made an image of me," she considered, "would have been
a very pretty compliment. But when it comes to pulling about my
features, as if they did not satisfy you, and mixing them up with
your features, until you have made the appearance of a young man
that looks like both of us, it is not a compliment. Instead, it is
the next thing but one to egotism."

"Perhaps, now I think of it, I am an egotist. At all events, I
am Manuel."

"Nor, dearest," says she, "is it quite befitting that you, who
are now betrothed to a princess, and who are going to be Lord of
Provence and King of Arles, as soon as I can get rid of Father,
should be always messing with wet mud."

"I know that very well," Manuel replied, "but, none the less, a
geas is on me to honor my mother's wishes, and to make an admirable
and significant figure in the world. Apart from that, though,
Alianora, I repeat to you, this scheme of yours, about poisoning
your father as soon as we are married, appears to me for various
reasons ill-advised. I am in no haste to be King of Arles, and, in
fact, I am not sure that I wish to be king at all, because my geas
is more important."

"Sweetheart, I love you very much, but my love does not blind me
to the fact that, no matter, what your talents at sorcery, you are
in everyday matters a hopelessly unpractical person. Do you leave
this affair to me, and I will manage it with every regard to
appearances."

"Ah, and does one have to preserve appearances even in such
matters as parricide?"

"But certainly it looks much better for Father to be supposed to
die of indigestion. People would be suspecting all sorts of evil of
the poor dear if it were known that his own daughter could not put
up with him. In any event, sweetheart, I am resolved that, since
very luckily Father has no sons, you shall be King of Arles before
this new year is out."

"No, I am Manuel: and it means more to me to be Manuel than to
be King of Arles, and Count of Provence, and seneschal of Aix and
Brignoles and Grasse and Massilia and Draguignan and so on."

"Oh, you are breaking my heart with this neglect of your true
interests! And it is all the doing of these three vile images,
which you value more than the old throne of Boson and Rothbold, and
oceans more than you do me!"

"Come, I did not say that."

"Yes, and you think, too, a deal more about that dead heathen
servant girl than you do about me, who am a princess and the heir
to a kingdom."

Manuel looked at Alianora for a considerable while, before
speaking. "My dear, you are, as I have always told you, an
unusually fine looking and intelligent girl. And yes, you are a
princess, of course, though you are no longer the Unattainable
Princess: that makes a difference certainly—But, over and
above all this, there was never anybody like Niafer, and it would
be nonsense to pretend otherwise."

The Princess said: "I wonder at myself. You are schooled in
strange sorceries unknown to the Apsarasas, there is no questioning
that, after the miracles you wrought with Helmas and Ferdinand:
even so, I too have a neat hand at magic, and it is not right for
you to be treating me as though I were the dirt under your feet.
And I endure it! It is that which puzzles me, it makes me wonder at
myself, and my sole comfort is that, at any rate, this wonderful
Niafer of yours is dead and done with."

Manuel sighed. "Yes, Niafer is dead, and these images also are
dead things, and both these facts continually trouble me. Nothing
can be done about Niafer, I suppose, but if only I could give some
animation to these images I think the geas upon me would be
satisfied."

"Such a desire is blasphemous, Manuel, for the Eternal Father
did no more than that with His primal sculptures in Eden."

Dom Manuel blinked his vivid blue eyes as if in consideration.
"Well, but," he said, gravely, "but if I am a child of God it is
only natural, I think, that I should inherit the tastes and habits
of my Father. No, it is not blasphemous, I think, to desire to make
an animated and lively figure, somewhat more admirable and
significant than that of the average man. No, I think not. Anyhow,
blasphemous or not, that is my need, and I must follow after my own
thinking and my own desire."

"If that desire were satisfied," asks Alianora, rather queerly,
"would you be content to settle down to some such rational method
of living as becomes a reputable sorcerer and king?"

"I think so, for a king has no master, and he is at liberty to
travel everywhither, and to see the ends of this world and judge
them. Yes, I think so, in a world wherein nothing is certain."

"If I but half way believed that, I would endeavor to obtain
Schamir."

"And what in the devil is this Schamir?"

"A slip of the tongue," replied Alianora, smiling. "No, I shall
have nothing to do with your idiotic mud figures, and I shall tell
you nothing further."

"Come now, pettikins!" says Manuel. And he began coaxing the
Princess of Provence with just such cajoleries as the big handsome
boy had formerly exercised against the peasant girls of
Rathgor.

"Schamir," said Alianora, at last, "is set in a signet ring
which is very well known in the country on the other side of the
fire. Schamir has the appearance of a black pebble; and if, after
performing the proper ceremonies, you were to touch one of these
figures with it the figure would become animated."

"Well, but," says Manuel, "the difficulty is that if I attempt
to pass through the fire in order to reach the country behind it, I
shall be burned to a cinder, and so I have no way of obtaining this
talisman."

"In order to obtain it," Alianora told him, "one must hard-boil
an egg from the falcon's nest, then replace it in the nest, and
secrete oneself near by with a crossbow, under a red and white
umbrella, until the mother bird, finding one of her eggs resists
all her endeavors to infuse warmth into it, flies off, and plunges
into the nearest fire, and returns with this ring in her beak. With
Schamir she will touch the boiled egg, and so restore the egg to
its former condition. At that moment she must be shot, and the ring
must be secured, before the falcon can return the talisman to its
owner. I mean, to its dreadful owner, who is"—here Alianora
made an incomprehensible sign,—"who is Queen Freydis of
Audela."

"Come," said Manuel, "what is the good of my knowing this in the
dead of winter! It will be months before the falcons are nesting
again."

"Manuel, Manuel, there is no understanding you! Do you not see
how badly it looks for a grown man, and far more for a famed
champion and a potent sorcerer, to be pouting and scowling and
kicking your heels about like that, and having no patience at
all?"

"Yes, I suppose it does look badly, but I am Manuel, and I
follow—"

"Oh, spare me that," cried Alianora, "or else, no matter how
much I may love you, dearest, I shall box your jaws!"

"None the less, what I was going to say is true," declared
Manuel, "and if only you would believe it, matters would go more
smoothly between us."

XI

Magic of the Apsarasas

Now the tale tells how, to humor Alianora, Count Manuel applied
himself to the magic of the Apsarasas. He went with the Princess to
a high secret place, and Alianora, crying sweetly, in the famous
old fashion, "Torolix, Ciccabau, Tio, Tio, Torolililix!" performed
the proper incantations, and forthwith birds came multitudinously
from all quarters of the sky, in a descending flood of color and
flapping and whistling and screeching.

The peacock screamed, "With what measure thou judgest others,
thou shalt thyself be judged."

Sang the nightingale, "Contentment is the greatest
happiness."

The turtle-dove called, "It were better for some created things
that they had never been created."

The peewit chirped, "He that hath no mercy for others, shall
find none for himself."

The stork said huskily, "The fashion of this world passeth
away."

And the wail of the eagle was, "Howsoever long life may be, yet
its inevitable term is death."

"Now that is virtually what I said," declared the stork, "and
you are a bold-faced and bald-headed plagiarist."

"And you," replied the eagle, clutching the stork's throat, "are
a dead bird that will deliver no more babies."

But Dom Manuel tugged at the eagle's wing, and asked him if he
really meant that to hold good before this Court of the Birds. And
when the infuriated eagle opened his cruel beak, and held up one
murderous claw, to make solemn oath that indeed he did mean it, and
would show them too, the stork very intelligently flew away.

"I shall not ever forget your kindness, Count Manuel," cried the
stork, "and do you remember that the customary three wishes are
always yours for the asking."

"And I too am grateful," said the abashed eagle,—"yes,
upon the whole, I am grateful, for if I had killed that long-legged
pest it would have been in contempt of the court, and they would
have set me to hatching red cockatrices. Still, his reproach was
not unfounded, and I must think up a new cry."

So the eagle perched on a rock, and said tentatively, "There is
such a thing as being too proud to fight." He shook his bald head
disgustedly, and tried, "The only enduring peace is a peace without
victory," but that did not seem to content him either. Afterward he
cried out, "All persons who oppose me have pygmy minds," and "If
everybody does not do exactly as I order, the heart of the world
will be broken": and many other foolish things he repeated, and
shook his head over, for none of these axioms pleased the eagle,
and he no longer admired the pedagogue who had invented them.

So in his worried quest for a saying sufficiently orotund and
meaningless to content his ethics, and to be hailed with
convenience as a great moral principle, the eagle forgot all about
Count Manuel: but the stork did not forget, because in the eyes of
the stork the life of the stork is valuable.

The other birds uttered various such sentiments as have been
recorded, and all these, they told Manuel, were accredited
sorceries. The big yellow-haired boy did not dispute it, he rarely
disputed anything: but the droop to that curious left eye of his
was accentuated, and he admitted to Alianora that he wondered if
such faint-hearted smug little truths were indeed the height of
wisdom, outside of religion and public speaking. Then he asked
which was the wisest of the birds, and they told him the
Zhar-Ptitza, whom others called the Fire-Bird.

Manuel induced Alianora to summon the Zhar-Ptitza, who is the
oldest and the most learned of all living creatures, although he
has thus far learned nothing assuredly except that appearances have
to be kept up. The Zhar-Ptitza came, crying wearily, "Fine feathers
make fine birds." You heard him from afar.

The Zhar-Ptitza himself had every reason to get comfort out of
this axiom, for his plumage was everywhere the most brilliant
purple, except that his neck feathers were the color of new gold,
and his tail was blue with somewhat longer red feathers
intermingled. His throat was wattled gorgeously, and his head was
tufted, and he seemed a trifle larger than the eagle. The Fire-Bird
brought with him his nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, and this
he put down upon the lichened rocks, and he sat in it while he
talked with Manuel.

The frivolous question that Manuel raised as to his clay
figures, the Zhar-Ptitza considered a very human bit of nonsense:
and the wise creature said he felt forced to point out that no
intelligent bird would ever dream of making images.

"But, sir," said Manuel, "I do not wish to burden this world
with any more lifeless images. Instead, I wish to make in this
world an animated figure, very much as, they say, a god did once
upon a time—"

"Come, you should not try to put too much responsibility upon
Jahveh," protested the Zhar-Ptitza, tolerantly, "for Jahveh made
only one man, and did not ever do it again. I remember the making
of that first man very clearly, for I was created the morning
before, with instructions to fly above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven, so I saw the whole affair. Yes, Jahveh did
create the first man on the sixth day. And I voiced no criticism.
For of course after working continuously for nearly a whole week,
and making so many really important things, no creative artist
should be blamed for not being in his happiest vein on the sixth
day."

"And did you happen to notice, sir," asks Manuel, hopefully, "by
what method animation was given to Adam?"

"No, he was drying out in the sun when I first saw him, with
Gabriel sitting at his feet, playing on a flageolet: and naturally
I did not pay any particular attention to such foolishness."

"Well, well, I do not assert that the making of men is the
highest form of art, yet, none the less, a geas is upon me to make
myself a very splendid and admirable young man."

"But why should you be wasting your small portion of breath and
strength? To what permanent use could one put a human being even if
the creature were virtuous and handsome to look at? Ah, Manuel, you
have not seen them pass, as I have seen them pass in swarms, with
their wars and their reforms and their great causes, and leaving
nothing but their bones behind them."

"Yes, yes, to you, at your age, who were old when Nineveh was
planned, it must seem strange; and I do not know why my mother
desired that I should make myself a splendid and admirable young
man. But the geas is upon me."

The Zhar-Ptitza sighed. "Certainly these feminine whims are not
easily explained. Yet your people have some way of making brand-new
men and women of all kinds. I am sure of this, for otherwise the
race would have been extinct a great while since at the rate they
kill one another. And perhaps they do adhere to Jahveh's method,
and make fresh human beings out of earth, for, now I think of it, I
have seen the small, recently completed ones, who looked exactly
like red clay."

"It is undeniable that babies do have something of that look,"
assented Manuel. "So then, at least, you think I may be working in
the proper medium?"

"It seems plausible, because I am certain your people are not
intelligent enough to lay eggs, nor could, of course, such an
impatient race succeed in getting eggs hatched. At all events, they
have undoubtedly contrived some method or other, and you might find
out from the least foolish of them about that method."

"Who, then, is the least foolish of mankind?"

"Probably King Helmas of Albania, for it was prophesied by me a
great while ago that he would become the wisest of men if ever he
could come by one of my shining white feathers, and I hear it
reported he has done so."

"Sir," said Manuel, dubiously, "I must tell you in confidence
that the feather King Helmas has is not yours, but was plucked from
the wing of an ordinary goose."

"Does that matter?" asked the Zhar-Ptitza. "I never prophesied,
of course, that he actually would find one of my shining white
feathers, because all my feathers are red and gold and purple."

"But how can there be any magic in a goose-feather?"

"There is this magic, that, possessing it, King Helmas has faith
in, and has stopped bothering about, himself."

"Is not to bother about yourself the highest wisdom?"

"Oh, no! Oh, dear me, no! I merely said it is the highest of
which man is capable."

"But the sages and philosophers, sir, that had such fame in the
old time, and made the maxims for you birds! Why, did King Solomon,
for example, rise no higher than that?"

"Yes, yes, to be sure!" said the Zhar-Ptitza, sighing again,
"now that was a sad error. The poor fellow was endowed with, just
as an experiment, considerable wisdom. And it caused him to
perceive that a man attains to actual contentment only when he is
drunk or when he is engaged in occupations not very decorously
described. So Sulieman-ben-Daoud gave over all the rest of his time
to riotous living and to co-educational enterprises. It was logic,
but it led to a most expensive seraglio and to a very unbecoming
appearance, and virtually wrecked the man's health. Yes, that was
the upshot of one of you being endowed with actual wisdom, just as
an experiment, to see what would come of it: so the experiment, of
course, has never been repeated. But of living persons, I dare
assert that you will find King Helmas appreciably freed from a
thousand general delusions by his one delusion about himself."

"Very well, then," says Manuel. "I suspect a wilful paradox and
a forced cynicism in much of what you have said, but I shall
consult with King Helmas about human life and about the figure I
have to make in the world."

So they bid each other farewell, and the Zhar-Ptitza picked up
his nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, and flew away with it:
and as he rose in the air the Zhar-Ptitza cried, "Fine feathers
make fine birds."

"But that is not the true proverb, sir," Manuel called up toward
the resplendent creature, "and such perversions too, they tell me,
are a mark of would-be cleverness."

"So it may seem to you now, my lad, but time is a very
transforming fairy. Therefore do you wait until you are older," the
bird replied, from on high, "and then you will know better than to
doubt my cry or to repeat it."

XII

Ice and Iron

Then came from oversea the Bishops of Ely and Lincoln, the prior
of Hurle, and the Master of the Temple, asking that King Raymond
send one of his daughters, with a suitable dowry, to be the King of
England's wife. "Very willingly," says Raymond Bérenger; and
told them they could have his third daughter Sancha, with a
thousand marks.

"But, Father," said Alianora, "Sancha is nothing but a child. A
fine queen she would make!"

"Still, my dear," replied King Raymond, "you are already
bespoke."

"I was not thinking about myself. I was thinking about Sancha's
true welfare."

"Of course you were, my dear, and everybody knows the sisterly
love you have for her."

"The pert little mess is spoilt enough as it is, Heaven knows.
And if things came to the pass that I had to stand up whenever
Sancha came into the room, and to sit on a footstool while she
lolled back in a chair the way Meregrett does, it would be the
child's ruin."

Raymond Bérenger said: "Now certainly it will be hard on
you to have two sisters that are queens, and with perhaps little
Beatrice also marrying some king or another when her time comes,
and you staying only a countess, who are the best-looking of the
lot."

"My father, I see what you would be at!" cried Alianora, aghast.
"You think it is my duty to overcome my private inclinations, and
to marry the King of England for ruthless and urgent political
reasons!"

"I only said, my darling—"

"—For you have seen at once that I owe this great
sacrifice to the future welfare of our beloved Provence. You have
noted, with that keenness which nothing escapes, that with the aid
of your wisdom and advice I would know very well how to manage this
high King that is the master of no pocket handkerchief place like
Provence but of England and of Ireland too."

"Also, by rights, of Aquitaine and Anjou and Normandy, my
precious. Still, I merely observed—"

"Oh, but believe me, I am not arguing with you, my dear father,
for I know that you are much wiser than I," says Alianora, bravely
wiping away big tears from her lovely eyes.

"Have it your own way, then," replied Raymond Bérenger,
with outspread hands. "But what is to be done about you and Count
Manuel here?"

The King looked toward the tapestry of Jephthah's sacrifice,
beside which Manuel sat, just then re-altering the figure of the
young man with the loving look of Alianora that Manuel had made
because of the urgency of his geas, and could not seem to get
exactly right.

"I am sure, Father, that Manuel also will be self-sacrificing
and magnanimous and sensible about it."

"Ah, yes! but what is to happen afterward? For anyone can see
that you and this squinting long-legged lad are fathoms deep in
love with each other."

"I think that after I am married, Father, you or King Ferdinand
or King Helmas can send Count Manuel into England on some embassy,
and I am sure that he and I will always be true and dear friends
without affording any handle to gossip."

"Oho!" King Raymond said, "I perceive your drift, and it is
toward a harbor that is the King of England's affair, and not mine.
My part is to go away now, so that you two may settle the details
of that ambassadorship in which Dom Manuel is to be the vicar of so
many kings."

Raymond Bérenger took up his sceptre and departed, and
the Princess turned to where Manuel was pottering with the three
images he had made in the likeness of Helmas and Ferdinand and
Alianora. "You see, now, Manuel dearest, I am heart-broken, but for
the realm's sake I must marry the King of England."

Manuel looked up from his work. "Yes, I heard. I am sorry, and I
never understood politics, but I suppose it cannot be helped. So
would you mind standing a little more to the left? You are in the
light now, and that prevents my seeing clearly what I am doing here
to this upper lip."

"And how can you be messing with that wet mud when my heart is
breaking!"

"Because a geas is upon me to make these images. No, I am sure I
do not know why my mother desired it. But everything which is fated
must be endured, just as we must now endure the obligation that is
upon you to marry the high King of England."

"My being married need not matter very much, after I am Queen,
for people declare this King is a poor spindling creature, and, as
I was saying, you can come presently into England."

Manuel looked at her for a moment or two. She colored. He,
sitting at the feet of weeping Jephthah, smiled. "Well," said
Manuel, "I will come into England when you send me a goose-feather.
So the affair is arranged."

"Oh, you are all ice and iron!" she said, "and you care for
nothing except your wet mud images, and I detest you!"

"My dearest," Manuel answered placidly, "the trouble is that
each of us desires one particular thing over and above other
things. Your desire is for power and a great name and for a king
who will be at once your mouthpiece, your lackey and your lover.
Now, candidly, I cannot spare the time to be any of these things,
because my desire is different from your desire, but is equally
strong. Also, it seems to me, as I become older, and see more of
men and of men's ways, that most people have no especial desire but
only preferences. In a world of such wishy-washy folk you and I
cannot hope to escape being aspersed with comparisons to ice and
iron, but it does not become us to be flinging these venerable
similes in each other's faces."

She kept silence a while. She laughed uneasily. "I so often
wonder about you, Manuel, as to whether inside the big,
high-colored, squinting, solemn husk is living a very wise person
or a very unmitigated fool."

"I perceive there is something else which we have in common, for
I, too, often wonder about that."

"It is settled, then?"

"It is settled that, instead of ruling little Arles, you are to
be Queen of England, and Lady of Ireland, and Duchess of Normandy
and Aquitaine, and Countess of Anjou; that our token is to be a
goose-feather; and that, I diffidently repeat, you are to get out
of my light and interfere no longer with the discharge of my
geas."

"And what will you do?"

"I must, as always, follow after my own thinking—"

"If you complete the sentence I shall undoubtedly scream."

Manuel laughed good-humoredly. "I suppose I do say it rather
often, but then it is true, and the great trouble between us,
Alianora, is that you do not perceive its truth."

She said, "And I suppose you will now be stalking off to some
woman or another for consolation?"

"No, the consolation I desire is not to be found in petticoats.
No, first of all, I shall go to King Helmas. For my images stay
obstinately lifeless, and there is something lacking to each of
them, and none is the figure I desire to make in this world. Now I
do not know what can be done about it, but the Zhar-Ptitza informs
me that King Helmas, since all doubt of himself has been put out of
mind, can aid me if any man can."

"Then we must say good-bye, though not for a long while, I
hope."

"Yes," Manuel said, "this is good-bye, and to a part of my
living it is an eternal good-bye."

Dom Manuel left his images where the old Hebrew captain appeared
to regard them with violent dumb anguish, and Manuel took both of
the girl's lovely little hands, and he stood thus for a while
looking down at the Princess.

Said Manuel, very sadly:

"I cry the elegy of such notions as are possible to boys alone.
'Surely,' I said, 'the informing and all-perfect soul shines
through and is revealed in this beautiful body.' So my worship
began for you, whose violet eyes retain at all times their chill
brittle shining, and do not soften, but have been to me always as
those eyes which, they say, a goddess turns toward ruined lovers
who cry the elegy of hope and contentment, with lips burned
bloodless by the searing of passions which she, immortal, may
neither feel nor comprehend. Even so do you, dear Alianora, who are
not divine, look toward me, quite unmoved by anything except
incurious wonder, the while that I cry my elegy.

"I, for love, and for the glamour of bright beguiling dreams
that hover and delude and allure all lovers, could never until
to-day behold clearly what person I was pestering with my notions.
I, being blind, could not perceive your blindness which blindly
strove to understand me, and which hungered for understanding, as I
for love. Thus our kisses veiled, at most, the foiled endeavorings
of flesh that willingly would enter into the soul's high places,
but is not able. Now, the game being over, what is the issue and
end of it time must attest. At least we should each sorrow a little
for what we have lost in this gaming,—you for a lover, and I
for love.

"No, but it is not love which lies here expiring, now we part
friendlily at the deathbed of that emotion which yesterday we
shared. This emotion also was not divine; and so might not outlive
the gainless months wherein, like one fishing for pearls in a
millpond, I have toiled to evoke from your heart more than Heaven
placed in this heart, wherein lies no love. Now the crying is
stilled that was the crying of loneliness to its unfound mate:
already dust is gathering light and gray upon the unmoving lips.
Therefore let us bury our dead, and having placed the body in the
tomb, let us honestly inscribe above this fragile, flower-like
perished emotion, 'Here lieth lust, not love.'"

Now Alianora pouted. "You use such very ugly words, sweetheart:
and you are talking unreasonably, too, for I am sure I am just as
sorry about it as you are—"

Manuel gave her that slow sleepy smile which was Manuel. "Just,"
he said,—"and it is that which humiliates. Yes, you and I are
second-rate persons, Alianora, and we have found each other out. It
is a pity. But we will always keep our secret from the rest of the
world, and our secret will always be a bond between us."

He kissed the Princess, very tenderly, and so left her.

Then Manuel of the high head departed from Aries, with his
lackeys and his images, riding in full estate, and displaying to
the spring sunlight the rearing silver stallion upon his shield and
the motto Mundus vult decipi. Alianora, watching from the
castle window, wept copiously, because the poor Princess had the
misfortune to be really in love with Dom Manuel. But there was no
doing anything with his obstinacy and his incomprehensible notions,
Alianora had found, and so she set about disposing of herself and
of the future through more plastic means. Her methods were altered
perforce, but her aim remained unchanged: and she still intended to
get everything she desired (which included Manuel) as soon as she
and the King of England had settled down to some sensible way of
living.

It worried this young pretty girl to consult her mirror, and to
foreknow that the King of England would probably be in love with
her for months and months: but then, as she philosophically
reflected, all women have to submit to being annoyed by the
romanticism of men. So she dried her big bright eyes, and sent for
dressmakers.

She ordered two robes each of five ells, the one to be of green
and lined with either cendal or sarcenet, and the other to be of
brunet stuff. She selected the cloth for a pair of purple sandals,
and for four pairs of boots, to be embroidered in circles around
the ankles, and she selected also nine very becoming chaplets made
of gold filigree and clusters of precious stones. And so she
managed to get through the morning, and to put Manuel out of mind,
for that while, but not for long.

XIII

What Helmas Directed

Now the Count of Poictesme departs from Provence, with his
lackeys carrying his images, and early in April he comes to Helmas
the Deep-Minded. The wise King was then playing with his small
daughter Mélusine (who later dethroned and imprisoned him),
but he sent the child away with a kiss, and he attentively heard
Dom Manuel through.

King Helmas looked at the images, prodded them with a shriveled
forefinger, and cleared his throat; and then said nothing, because,
after all, Dom Manuel was Count of Poictesme.

"What is needed?" said Manuel.

"They are not true to life," replied Helmas—"particularly
this one which has the look of me."

"Yes, I know that: but who can give life to my images?"

King Helmas pushed back his second best crown, wherein was set
the feather from the wing of the miller's goose, and he scratched
his forehead. He said, "There is a power over all figures of earth
and a queen whose will is neither to loose nor to bind." Helmas
turned toward a thick book, wherein was magic.

"Yes, queen is the same as cwen. Therefore Queen
Freydis of Audela might help you."

"Yes, for it is she that owns Schamir. But the falcons are not
nesting now, and how can I go to Freydis, that woman of strange
deeds?"

"Oh, people nowadays no longer use falcons; and of course nobody
can go to Freydis uninvited. Still, it can be managed that Freydis
will come to you when the moon is void and powerless, and when this
and that has been arranged."

Thereafter Helmas the Deep-Minded told Count Manuel what was
requisite. "So you will need such and such things," says King
Helmas, "but, above all, do not forget the ointment."

Count Manuel went alone into Poictesme, which was his fief if
only he could get it. He came secretly to Upper Morven, that place
of horrible fame. Near the ten-colored stone, whereon men had
sacrificed to Vel-Tyno in time's youth, he builded an enclosure of
peeled willow wands, and spread butter upon them, and tied them
with knots of yellow ribbons, as Helmas had directed. Manuel
arranged all matters within the enclosure as Helmas had directed.
There Manuel waited, on the last night in April, regarding the full
moon.

In a while you saw the shadowings on the moon's radiancy begin
to waver and move: later they passed from the moon's face like
little clouds, and the moon was naked of markings. This was a token
that the Moon-Children had gone to the well from which once a month
they fetch water, and that for an hour the moon would be void and
powerless. With this and that ceremony Count Manuel kindled such a
fire upon the old altar of Vel-Tyno as Helmas had directed.

Manuel cried aloud: "Now be propitious, infernal, terrestrial
and celestial Bombo! Lady of highways, patroness of crossroads,
thou who bearest the light! Thou who dost labor always in
obscurity, thou enemy of the day, thou friend and companion of
darkness! Thou rejoicing in the barking of dogs and in shed blood,
thus do I honor thee."

Manuel did as Helmas had directed, and for an instant the
screamings were pitiable, but the fire ended these speedily.

Then Manuel cried, again: "O thou who wanderest amid shadows and
over tombs, and dost tether even the strong sea! O whimsical sister
of the blighting sun, and fickle mistress of old death! O Gorgo,
Mormo, lady of a thousand forms and qualities! now view with a
propitious eye my sacrifice!"

Thus Manuel spoke, and steadily the fire upon the altar grew
larger and brighter as he nourished it repugnantly.

When the fire was the height of a warrior, and queer things were
happening to this side and to that side, Count Manuel spoke the
ordered words: and of a sudden the flames' colors were altered, so
that green shimmerings showed in the fire, as though salt were
burning there. Manuel waited. This greenness shifted and writhed
and increased in the heart of the fire, and out of the fire oozed a
green serpent, the body of which was well—nigh as thick as a
man's body.

This portent came toward Count Manuel horribly. He, who was
familiar with serpents, now grasped this monster's throat, and to
the touch its scales were like very cold glass.

The great snake shifted so resistlessly that Manuel was forced
back toward the fire and toward a doom more dreadful than burning:
and the firelight was in the snake's contemptuous wise eyes. Manuel
was of stalwart person, but his strength availed him nothing until
he began to recite aloud, as Helmas had directed, the
multiplication tables: Freydis could not withstand mathematics.

So when Manuel had come to two times eleven the tall fire
guttered as though it bended under the passing of a strong wind:
then the flames burned high, and Manuel could see that he was
grasping the throat of a monstrous pig. He, who was familiar with
pigs, could see that this was a black pig, caked with dried curds
of the Milky Way; its flesh was chill to the touch, like dead
flesh; and it had long tusks, which possessed life of their own,
and groped and writhed toward Manuel like fat white worms.

Then Manuel said, as Helmas had directed: "Solomon's provision
for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore
measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the
pastures, and a hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and
fallow deer, and fatted fowl. But Elijah the Tishbite was fed by
ravens that brought him bread and flesh."

Again the tall flames guttered. Now Manuel was grasping a thick
heatless slab of crystal, like a mirror, wherein he could see
himself quite clearly. Just as he really was, he, who was not
familiar with such mirrors, could see Count Manuel, housed in a
little wet dirt with old inveterate stars adrift about him
everywhither; and the spectacle was enough to frighten anybody.

So Manuel said: "The elephant is the largest of all animals, and
in intelligence approaches the nearest to man. Its nostril is
elongated, and answers to the purpose of a hand. Its toes are
undivided, and it lives two hundred years. Africa breeds elephants,
but India produces the largest."

The mirror now had melted into a dark warm fluid which oozed
between his fingers, dripping to the ground. But Manuel held
tightly to what remained between his palms, and he felt, they say,
that in the fluid was struggling something small and soft and
living, as though he held a tiny minnow.

Said Manuel, "A straight line is the shortest distance between
two points."

Of a sudden the fire became an ordinary fire, and the witches of
Amneran screamed, and Morven was emptied of sorcery, and Count
Manuel was grasping the warm soft throat of a woman. Instantly he
had her within the enclosure of peeled willow wands that had been
spread with butter and tied with knots of yellow ribbon, because
into such an enclosure the power and the dominion of Freydis could
never enter.

All these things Manuel did precisely as King Helmas had
directed.

XIV

They Duel on Morven

So by the light of the seven candles Dom Manuel first saw Queen
Freydis in her own shape, and in the appearance which she wore in
her own country. What Manuel thought there was never any telling:
but every other man who saw Queen Freydis in this appearance
declared that instantly all his past life became a drugged prelude
to the moment wherein he stood face to face with Freydis, the high
Queen of Audela.

Freydis showed now as the most lovely of womankind. She had
black plaited hair, and folds of crimson silk were over her white
flesh, and over her shoulders was a black cloak embroidered with
little gold stars and ink-horns, and she wore sandals of gilded
bronze. But in her face was such loveliness as may not be told.

Now Freydis went from one side of the place to the other side,
and saw the magics that protected the enclosure. "Certainly, you
have me fast," the high Queen said. "What is it you want of
me?"

Manuel showed her the three images which he had made, set there
arow. "I need your aid with these."

Queen Freydis looked at them, and Freydis smiled. "These frozen
abortions are painstakingly made. What more can anybody
demand?"

Dom Manuel told her that he desired to make an animated and
lively figure.

Whereupon she laughed, merrily and sweetly and scornfully, and
replied that never would she give such aid.

"Very well, then," said Manuel, "I have ready the means to
compel you." He showed this lovely woman the instruments of her
torture. His handsome young face was very grave, as though already
his heart were troubled. He thrust her hand into the cruel vise
which was prepared. "Now, sorceress, whom all men dread save me,
you shall tell me the Tuyla incantation as the reward of my
endeavors, or else a little by a little I shall destroy the hand
that has wrought so many mischiefs."

Freydis in the light of the seven candles showed pale as milk.
She said: "I am frail and human in this place, and have no power
beyond the power of every woman, and no strength at all.
Nevertheless, I will tell you nothing."

Manuel set his hand to the lever, ready to loose destruction.
"To tell me what I desire you to tell me will do you no
hurt—"

"No," replied Freydis: "but I am not going to take orders from
you or any man breathing."

"—And for defying me you will suffer very
terribly—"

"Yes," replied Freydis. "And much you will care!" she said,
reproachfully.

"—Therefore I think that you are acting foolishly."

Freydis said: "You make a human woman of me, and then expect me
to act upon reason. It is you who are behaving foolishly."

Count Manuel meditated, for this beyond doubt sounded sensible.
From the look of his handsome young face, his heart was now
exceedingly troubled. Queen Freydis breathed more freely, and began
to smile, with the wisdom of women, which is not super-human, but
is ruthless.

"The hand would be quite ruined, too," said Manuel, looking at
it more carefully. Upon the middle finger was a copper ring, in
which was set a largish black stone: this was Schamir. But Manuel
looked only at the hand.

He touched it. "Your hand, Queen Freydis, whatever mischief it
may have executed, is soft as velvet. It is colored like
rose-petals, but it smells more sweet than they. No, certainly, my
images are not worth the ruining of such a hand."

Then Manuel released her, sighing. "My geas must stay upon me,
and my images must wait," says Manuel.

"Why, do you really like my hands?" asked Freydis, regarding
them critically.

Manuel said: "Ah, fair sweet enemy, do not mock at me! All is in
readiness to compel you to do my will. Had you preserved some ugly
shape I would have conquered you. But against the shape which you
now wear I cannot contend. Dragons and warlocks and chimaeras and
such nameless monsters as I perceive to be crowding about this
enclosure of buttered willow wands I do not fear at all, but I
cannot fight against the appearance which you now wear."

"Why, do you really like my natural appearance?" Freydis said,
incredibly surprised. "It is a comfort, of course, to slip into it
occasionally, but I had never really thought much about it one way
or the other—"

She went to the great mirror which had been set ready as Helmas
directed, "I never liked my hair in these severe big plaits,
either. As for those monsters yonder, they are my people, who are
coming out of the fire to rescue me, in some of the forgotten
shapes, as spoorns and trows and calcars, and other terrors of
antiquity. But they cannot get into this enclosure of buttered
willow wands, poor dears, on account of your magickings. How
foolish they look—do they not?—leering and capering and
gnashing their teeth, with no superstitious persons anywhere to pay
attention to them."

The Queen paused: she coughed delicately. "But you were talking
some nonsense or other about my natural appearance not being bad
looking. Now most men prefer blondes, and, besides, you are not
really listening to me, and that is not polite."

"It is so difficult to talk collectedly," said Manuel, "with
your appalling servitors leering and capering and gnashing double
sets of teeth all over Upper Morven—"

She saw the justice of this. She went now to that doorway
through which, unless a man lifted her over the threshold, she
might not pass, on account of the tonthecs and the spaks and the
horseshoes.

She cried, in a high sweet voice: "A penny, a penny, twopence, a
penny and a half, and a half-penny! Now do you go away, all of you,
for the wisdom of Helmas is too strong for us. There is no way for
you to get into, nor for me to get out of, this place of buttered
willow wands, until I have deluded and circumvented this
pestiferous, squinting young mortal. Go down into Bellegarde and
spill the blood of Northmen, or raise a hailstorm, or amuse
yourselves in one way or another way. Anyhow, do you take no
thought for me, who am for the while a human woman: for my
adversary is a mortal man, and in that duel never yet has the man
conquered."

She turned to Manuel. She said:

"The land of Audela is my kingdom. But you embraced my
penalties, you have made a human woman of me. So do I tread with
wraiths, for my lost realm alone is real. Here all is but a
restless contention of shadows which pass presently; here all that
is visible and all the colors known to men are shadows dimming the
true colors; here time and death, the darkest shadows known to men,
delude you with false seemings: for all such things as men hold
incontestable, because they are apparent to sight and sense, are a
weariful drifting of fogs that veil the world which is no longer
mine. So in this twilit world of yours do we of Audela appear to be
but men and women."

"I would that such women appeared more often," said Manuel.

"The land of Audela is my kingdom, where I am Queen of all that
lies behind this veil of human sight and sense. This veil may not
ever be lifted; but very often the veil is pierced, and noting the
broken place, men call it fire. Through these torn places men may
glimpse the world that is real: and this glimpse dazzles their
dimmed eyes and weakling forces, and this glimpse mocks at their
lean might Through these rent places, when the opening is made
large enough, a few men here and there, not quite so witless as
their fellows, know how to summon us of Audela when for an hour the
moon is void and powerless: we come for an old reason: and we come
as men and women."

"Ah, but you do not speak with the voices of men and women,"
Manuel replied, "for your voice is music."

"The land of Audela is my kingdom, and very often, just for the
sport's sake, do I and my servitors go secretly among you. As human
beings we blunder about your darkened shadow world, bound by the
laws of sight and sense, but keeping always in our hearts the
secrets of Audela and the secret of our manner of returning
thither. Sometimes, too, for the sport's sake, we imprison in
earthen figures a spark of the true life of Audela: and then you
little persons, that have no authentic life, but only the
flickering of a vexed shadow to sustain you in brief fretfulness,
say it is very pretty; and you negligently applaud us as the most
trivial of men and women."

"No; we applaud you as the most beautiful," says Manuel.

"Come now, Count Manuel, and do you have done with your silly
flatterings, which will never wheedle anything out of me! So you
have trapped Queen Freydis in mortal flesh. Therefore I must abide
in the body of a human woman, and be subject to your whims, and to
your beautiful big muscles, you think, until I lend a spark of
Audela's true life to your ridiculous images. But I will show you
better, for I will never give in to you nor to any man
breathing."

In silence Count Manuel regarded the delightful shaping and the
clear burning colors of this woman's face. He said, as if in
sadness: "The images no longer matter. It is better to leave them
as they are."

"That is very foolish talk," Queen Freydis answered, promptly,
"for they need my aid if ever any images did. Not that, however, I
intend to touch them."

"Indeed, I forbid you to touch them, fair enemy. For were the
images made as animated and lively as I wish them to be, I would be
looking at them always, and not caring for any woman: and no woman
anywhere would have the power to move me as your beauty moves me
now, and I would not be valuing you the worth of an old onion."

"That is not the truth," says Freydis, angrily, "for the man who
is satisfied with the figure he has made is as great a fool about
women as any other man. And who are you to be forbidding me
anything?"

"I would have you remember," said Manuel, very masterfully,
"that they are my images, to do with as I wish. Also I would have
you remember that, whatever you may pretend to be in Audela, here I
am stronger than you."

Now the proud woman laughed. Defiantly she touched the nearest
image, with formal ancient gestures, and you could see the black
stone Schamir taking on the colors of an opal. Under her touch the
clay image which had the look of Alianora shivered, and drew
sobbing breath. The image rose, a living creature that was far more
beautiful than human kind, and it regarded Manuel scornfully. Then
it passed limping from the enclosure: and Manuel sighed.

"That is a strong magic," said Manuel: "and this is almost
exactly the admirable and significant figure that I desired to make
in the world. But, as I now perceive too late, I fashioned the legs
of this figure unevenly, and the joy I have in its life is less
than the shame that I take from its limping."

"Such magic is a trifle," Freydis replied, "although it is the
only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands.
Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders
from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must
limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries,
to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not going to be
dictated to."

"I do not greatly care, O fairest and most shrewd of enemies. A
half-hour since, it seemed to me an important matter to wrest from
you this secret of giving life to images. Now I have seen the
miracle; I know that for the man who has your favor it is possible
to become as a god, creating life, and creating lovelier living
beings than any god creates, and beings which live longer, too: and
even so, it is not of these things that I am really thinking, but
only of your eyes."

"Why, do you like my eyes!" says Freydis,—"you, who if
once you could make living images would never be caring about any
woman any more?"

But Manuel told her wherein her eyes were different from the
eyes of any other person, and more dangerous, and she listened,
willingly enough, for Freydis was not a human woman. Thereafter it
appeared that a grieving and a great trouble of mind had come upon
Manuel because of the loveliness of Freydis, for he made this
complaint:

"There is much loss in the world, where men war ceaselessly with
sorrow, and time like a strong thief strips all men of all they
prize. Yet when the emperor is beaten in battle and his broad lands
are lost, he, shrugging, says, 'In the next battle I may conquer.'
And when the bearded merchant's ship is lost at sea, he says, 'The
next voyage, belike, will be prosperous.' Even when the life of an
old beggar departs from him in a ditch, he says, 'I trust to be
to-morrow a glad young seraph in paradise.' Thus hope serves as a
cordial for every hurt: but for him who had beheld the loveliness
of Freydis there is no hope at all.

"For, in comparison with that alien clear beauty, there is no
beauty in this world. He that has beheld the loveliness of Freydis
must go henceforward as a hungry person, because of troubling
memories: and his fellows deride him enviously. All the world is
fretted by his folly, knowing that his faith in the world's might
is no longer firm-set, and that he aspires to what is beyond the
world's giving. In his heart he belittles the strong stupid lords
of earth; and they, being strong, plan vengeance, the while that in
a corner he makes images to commemorate what is lost: and so for
him who has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at
all.

"He that has willed to look upon Queen Freydis does not dread to
consort with serpents nor with swine; he faces the mirror wherein a
man beholds himself without self-deceiving; he views the blood that
drips from his soiled hands, and knows that this, too, was needed:
yet these endurings purchase but one hour. The hour passes, and
therewith passes also Freydis, the high Queen. Only the memory of
her hour remains, like a cruel gadfly, for which the crazed
beholder of Queen Freydis must build a lodging in his images, madly
endeavoring to commingle memories with wet mud: and so for him who
has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all."

Freydis heard him through, considerately. "But I wonder to how
many other women you have talked such nonsense about beauty and
despair and eternity," said Freydis, "and they very probably liking
to hear it, the poor fools! And I wonder how you can expect me to
believe you, when you pretend to think me all these fine things,
and still keep me penned in this enclosure like an old vicious
cow."

"No, that is not the way it is any longer. For now the figure
that I have made in the world, and all else that is in the world,
and all that is anywhere without this enclosure of buttered willow
wands, mean nothing to me, and there is no meaning in anything save
in the loveliness of Freydis."

Dom Manuel went to the door of the enclosure then to the
windows, sweeping away the gilded tonthecs and the shining spaks,
and removing from the copper nails the horseshoes that had been
cast by Mohammed's mare and Hrimfaxi and Balaam's ass and Pegasus.
"You were within my power. Now I destroy that power, and therewith
myself. Now is the place unguarded, and all your servitors are free
to enter, and all your terrors are untrammeled, to be loosed
against me, who have no longer anything to dread. For I love you
with such mortal love as values nothing else beside its desire, and
you care nothing for me."

After a little while of looking she sighed, and said uneasily:
"It is the foolish deed of a true lover. And, really, I do like
you, rather. But, Manuel, I do not know what to do next! Never at
any time has this thing happened before, so that all my garnered
wisdom is of no use whatever. Nobody anywhere has ever dared to
snap his fingers at the fell power of Freydis as you are doing, far
less has anybody ever dared to be making eyes at her. Besides, I do
not wish to consume you with lightnings, and to smite you with
insanity appears so unnecessary."

"I love you," Manuel said, "and your heart is hard, and your
beauty is beyond the thinking of man, and your will is neither to
loose nor to bind. In a predicament so unexampled, how can it at
all matter to me whatever you may elect to do?"

"Then certainly I shall not waste any of my fine terrors on
you!" said Freydis, with a vexed tossing of her head. "Nor have I
any more time to waste upon you either, for presently the
Moon-Children will be coming back to their places: and before the
hour is out wherein the moon stays void and powerless I must return
to my own kingdom, whither you may not follow, to provoke me with
any more of your nonsense. And then you will be properly sorry, I
dare say, for you will De remembering me always, and there will be
only human women to divert you, and they are poor creatures."

Freydis went again to the mirror, and she meditated there. "Yes,
you will be remembering me with my hair in these awful plaits, and
that is a pity, but still you will remember me always. And when you
make images they will be images of me. No, but I cannot have you
making any more outrageous parodies like astonished corpses, and
people everywhere laughing at Queen Freydis!"

She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed,
and she wrote with this gryphon's feather. "So here is the recipe
for the Tuyla incantation with which to give life to your images.
It may comfort you a little to perform that silly magic. It,
anyhow, will prevent such good-for-nothing minxes as may have no
more intelligence than to take you seriously, from putting on too
many airs and graces around the images which you will make of me
with my hair done so very unbecomingly."

"Nothing can ever comfort me, fair enemy, when you have gone
away," said Manuel.

But he took the parchment.

XV

Bandages for the Victor

They came out of the enclosure, to the old altar of Vel-Tyno,
while the moon was still void and powerless. The servitors of
Freydis were thronging swiftly toward Upper Morven, after a
pleasant hour of ravening and ramping about Poictesme. As spoorns
and trows and calcars and as other long forgotten shapes they came,
without any noise, so that Upper Morven was like the disordered
mind of a wretch that is dying in fever: and to this side and to
that side the witches of Amneran sat nodding in approval of what
they saw.

Thus, one by one, the forgotten shapes came to the fire, and
cried, "A penny, a penny, twopence, a penny and a half, and a
halfpenny!" as each entered into the fire which was the gateway to
their home.

"Farewell!" said Freydis: and as she spoke she sighed.

"Not thus must be our parting," Manuel says. "For do you listen
now, Queen Freydis! it was Helmas the Deep-Minded who told me what
was requisite. 'Queen is the same as cwen, which
means a woman, no more nor less,' said the wise King. 'You have but
to remember that.'"

She took his meaning. Freydis cried out, angrily: "Then all the
foolishness you have been talking about my looks and your love for
me was pre-arranged! And you have cheated me out of the old Tuyla
mystery by putting on the appearance of loving me, and by pestering
me with such nonsense as a plowman trades against the heart of a
milkmaid! Now, certainly, I shall reward your candor in a fashion
that will be whispered about for a long while."

With that, Queen Freydis set about a devastating magic.

"All, all was pre-arranged save one thing," said Manuel, with a
yapping laugh, and not even looking at the commencing terrors. He
thrust into the fire the parchment which Freydis had given him.
"Yes, all was pre-arranged except that Helmas did not purge me of
that which will not accept the hire of any lying to you. So the
Deep-Minded's wisdom comes, at the last pinch, to naught."

Now Freydis for an instant waved back two-thirds of an appalling
monster, which was as yet incompletely evoked for Dom Manuel's
destruction, and Freydis cried impatiently, "But have you no sense
whatever! for you are burning your hand."

And indeed the boy had already withdrawn his hand with a
grimace, for in the ardor of executing his noble gesture, as Queen
Freydis saw, he had not estimated how hot her fires were.

"It is but a little hurt to me who have taken a great hurt,"
says Manuel, sullenly. "For I had thought to lie, and in my mouth
the lie turned to a truth. At least, I do not profit by my
false-dealing, and I wave you farewell with empty hands burned
clean of theft."

Then she who was a human woman said, "But you have burned your
hand!"

"It does not matter: I have ointments yonder. Make haste, Queen
Freydis, for the hour passes wherein the moon is void and
powerless."

"There is time." She brought out water from the enclosure, and
swiftly bathed Dom Manuel's hand.

From the fire now came a whispering, "Make haste, Queen Freydis!
make haste, dear Fairy mistress!"

"There is time," said Freydis, "and do you stop flurrying me!"
She brought from the enclosure a pot of ointment, and she dressed
Manuel's hand.

"Borram, borram, Leanhaun shee!" the fire crackled. "Now the
hour ends."

Then Freydis sprang from Manuel, toward the flames beyond which
she was queen of ancient mysteries, and beyond which her will was
neither to loose nor to bind. And she cried hastily, "A penny, a
penny, twopence—"

But just for a moment she looked back at Morven, and at the man
who waited upon Morven alone and hurt. In his firelit eyes she saw
love out of measure and without hope. And in the breast of Freydis
moved the heart of a human woman.

"I cannot help it," she said, as the hour passed. "Somebody has
to bandage it, and men have no sense in these matters."

Whereon the fire roared angrily, and leaped, and fell dead, for
the Moon-Children Bil and Hjuki had returned from the well which is
called Byrgir, and the moon was no longer void and powerless.

"So, does that feel more comfortable?" said Freydis. She knew
that within this moment age and sorrow and death had somewhere laid
inevitable ambuscades, from which to assail her by and by, for she
was mortal after the sacred fire's extinction, and she meant to
make the best of it.

For a while Count Manuel did not speak. Then he said, in a
shaking voice: "O woman dear and lovely and credulous and
compassionate, it is you and you alone that I must be loving
eternally with such tenderness as is denied to proud and lonely
queens on their tall thrones! And it is you that I must be serving
always with such a love as may not be given to the figure that any
man makes in this world! And though all life may be a dusty waste
of endless striving, and though the ways of men may always be the
ways of folly, yet are these ways our ways henceforward, and not
hopeless ways, for you and I will tread them together."

"Now certainly there is in Audela no such moonstruck nonsense to
be hearing, nor any such quick-footed hour of foolishness to be
living through," Freydis replied, "as here to-night has robbed me
of my kingdom."

"Love will repay," said Manuel, as is the easy fashion of
men.

And Freydis, a human woman now in all things, laughed low and
softly in the darkness. "Repay me thus, my dearest: no matter how
much I may coax you in the doubtful time to come, do you not ever
tell me how you happened to have the bandages and the pot of
ointment set ready by the mirror. For it is bad for a human woman
ever to be seeing through the devices of wise kings, and far worse
for her to be seeing through the heroic antics of her husband."

Meanwhile in Arles young Alianora had arranged her own match
with more circumspection. The English, who at first demanded twenty
thousand marks as her jointure, had after interminable bargaining
agreed to accept her with three thousand: and she was to be dowered
with Plymouth and Exeter and Tiverton and Torquay and Brixham, and
with the tin mines of Devonshire and Cornwall. In everything except
the husband involved, she was marrying excellently, and so all
Arles that night was ornamented with flags and banners and chaplets
and bright hangings and flaring lamps and torches, and throughout
Provence there was festivity of every sort, and the Princess had
great honor and applause.

But in the darkness of Upper Morven they had happiness, no
matter for how brief a while.

PART THREE

THE BOOK OF CAST ACCOUNTS

TO

H.L. MENCKEN

Consider, faire Miserie, (quoth Manuel) that it lyes not in
mans power to place his loue where he list, being the worke of an
high Deity. A Birde was neuer seen in Pontus, nor true loue
in a fleeting mynde: neuer shall remoue the affection of my Hearte,
which in nature resembleth the stone Abiston.

XVI

Freydis

They of Poictesme narrate how Queen Freydis and Count Manuel
lived together amicably upon Upper Morven. They tell also how the
iniquitous usurper, Duke Asmund, at this time held Bellegarde close
at hand, but that his Northmen kept away from Upper Morven, on
account of the supernatural beings you were always apt to encounter
thereabouts, so that Manuel and Freydis had, at first, no human
company.

"Between now and a while," said Freydis, "you must be capturing
Bellegarde and cutting off Duke Asmund's ugly head, because by
right and by King Ferdinand's own handwriting all Poictesme belongs
to you."

"Well, we will let that wait a bit," says Manuel, "for I do not
so heartily wish to be tied down with parchments in a count's
gilded seat as I do to travel everywhither and see the ends of this
world and judge them. At all events, dear Freydis, I am content
enough for the present, in this little home of ours, and public
affairs can wait."

"Still, something ought to be done about it," said Freydis. And,
since Manuel displayed an obstinate prejudice against any lethal
plague, she put the puckerel curse upon Asmund, by which he was
afflicted with all small bodily ills that can intervene between
corns and dandruff.

On Upper Morven Freydis had reared by enchantment a modest home,
that was builded of jasper and porphyry and yellow and violet
breccia. Inside, the stone walls were everywhere covered with
significant traceries in low relief, and were incrusted at
intervals with disks and tesserae of turquoise-colored porcelain.
The flooring, of course, was of zinc, as a defence against the
unfriendly Alfs, who are at perpetual war with Audela, and,
moreover, there was a palisade, enclosing all, of peeled willow
wands, not buttered but oiled, and fastened with unknotted
ribbons.

Everything was very simple and homelike, and here the servitors
of Freydis attended them when there was need. The fallen Queen was
not a gray witch—not in appearance certainly, but in her
endowments, which were not limited as are the powers of black
witches and white witches. She instructed Dom Manuel in the magic
of Audela, and she and Manuel had great times together that spring
and summer, evoking ancient dis-crowned gods and droll monsters and
instructive ghosts to entertain them in the pauses between other
pleasures.

They heard no more, for that turn, of the clay figure to which
they had given life, save for the news brought, by a bogglebo, that
as the limping gay young fellow went down from Morven the reputable
citizenry everywhere were horrified because he went as he was
created, stark-naked, and this was not considered respectable. So a
large tumble-bug came from the west, out of the quagmires of
Philistia and followed after the animated figure, yelping and
spluttering, "Morals, not art!" And for that while, the figure went
out of Manuel's saga, thus malodorously accompanied.

"But we will make a much finer figure," says Freydis, "so it
does not matter."

"Yes, by and by," says Manuel, "but we will let that wait a
bit."

"You are always saying that nowadays!"

"Ah, but, my dear, it is so very pleasant to rest here doing
nothing serious for a little while, now that my geas is discharged.
Presently of course we must be travelling everywhither, and when we
have seen the ends of this world, and have judged them, I shall
have time, and greater knowledge too, to give to this image
making—"

"It is not from any remote strange places, dear Manuel, but from
his own land that a man must get the earth for this image
making—"

"Well, be that as it may, your kisses are to me far more
delicious than your magic."

"I love to hear you say that, my dearest, but still—"

"No, not at all, for you are really much nicer when you are
cuddling so, than when you are running about the world pretending
to be pigs and snakes and fireworks, and murdering people with your
extravagant sorceries."

Saying this, he kissed her, and thus stilled her protests, for
in these amiable times Queen Freydis also was at bottom less
interested in magic than in kisses. Indeed, there was never any
sorceress more loving and tender than Freydis, now that she had
become a human woman.

If ever she was irritable it was only when Manuel confessed, in
reply to jealous questionings, that he did not find her quite so
beautiful nor so clever as Niafer had been: but this, as Manuel
pointed out, could not be helped. For there had never been anybody
like Niafer, and it would be nonsense to say otherwise.

It is possible that Dom Manuel believed this. The rather homely,
not intelligent, and in no respect bedazzling servant girl may well
have been—in the inexplicable way these things fell
out,—the woman whom Manuel's heart had chosen, and who
therefore in his eyes for the rest of time must differ from all
other persons. Certainly no unastigmatic judge would have decreed
this swarthy Niafer fit, as the phrase is, to hold a candle either
to Freydis or Alianora: whereas Manuel did not conceal, even from
these royal ladies themselves, his personal if unique
evaluations.

To the other side, some say that ladies who are used to hourly
admiration cannot endure the passing of a man who seems to admire
not quite wholeheartedly. He who does not admire at all is
obviously a fool, and not worth bothering about. But to him who
admits, "You are well enough," and makes as though to pass on,
there is a mystery attached: and the one way to solve it is to
pursue this irritating fellow. Some (reasoning thus) assert that
squinting Manuel was aware of this axiom, and that he respected it
in all his dealings with Freydis and Alianora. Either way, these
theorists did not ever get any verbal buttressing from Dom Manuel.
Niafer dead and lost to him, he, without flaunting any unexampled
ardors, fell to loving Alianora: and now that Freydis had put off
immortality for his kisses, the tall boy had, again, somewhat the
air of consenting to accept this woman's sacrifice, and her
loveliness and all her power and wisdom, as being upon the whole
the handiest available substitute for Niafer's sparse charms.

Yet others declare, more simply, that Dom Manuel was so
constituted as to value more cheaply every desire after he had
attained it. And these say he noted that—again in the
inexplicable way these things fall out,—now Manuel possessed
the unearthly Queen she had become, precisely as Alianora had
become, a not extraordinary person, who in all commerce with her
lover dealt as such.

"But do you really love me, O man of all men?" Freydis would
say, "and, this damned Niafer apart, do you love me a little more
than you love any other woman?"

"Why, are there any other women?" says Manuel, in fine surprise.
"Oh, to be sure, I suppose there are, but I had forgotten about
them. I have not heard or seen or thought of those petticoated
creatures since my dear Freydis came."

The sorceress purred at this sort of talk, and she rested her
head where there seemed a place especially made for it. "I wish I
could believe your words, king of my heart. I have to strive so
hard, nowadays, to goad you into saying these idiotic suitable dear
things: and even when at last you do say them your voice is light
and high, and makes them sound as though you were joking."

He kissed the thick coil of hair which lay fragrant against his
lips. "Do you know, in spite of my joking, I do love you a great
deal?"

"I would practise saying that over to myself," observed Freydis
critically. "You should let your voice break a little after the
first three words."

"I speak as I feel. I love you, Freydis, and I tell you so."

"Yes, but you are no longer a perpetual nuisance about it."

"Alas, my dear, you are no longer the unattainable Queen of the
country on the other side of the fire, and that makes a difference,
certainly. It is equally certain that I love you over and above all
living women."

"Ah, but, my dearest, who loves you more than any human tongue
can tell?"

"A peculiarly obstinate and lovely imbecile," says Manuel; and
he did that which seemed suitable.

Later Freydis sighed luxuriously. "That saves you the trouble of
talking, does it not? And you talked so madly and handsomely that
first night, when you wanted to get around me on account of the
image, but now you do not make me any pretty speeches at all."

"Oh, heavens!" said Manuel, "but I am embracing a monomaniac.
Dear Freydis, whatever I might say would be perforce the same old
words that have been whispered by millions of men to many more
millions of women, and my love for you is a quite unparalleled
thing which ought not to be travestied by any such shopworn
apparel."

"Now again you must be putting me off with solemn joking in that
light high voice, and there is no faithfulness in that voice, and
its talking troubles me."

"I speak as I feel. I love you, Freydis, and I tell you so, but
I cannot be telling it over and over again every quarter of the
hour."

"Oh, but very certainly this big squinting boy is the most
unloquacious and the most stubborn brute that ever lived!"

"And would you have me otherwise?"

"No, that is the queer part of it. But it is a grief to me to
wonder if you foresaw as much."

"I!" says Manuel, jovially. "But what would I be doing with any
such finespun policies? My dear, until you comprehend I am the most
frank and downright creature that ever lived you do not begin to
appreciate me."

"I know you are, big boy. But still, I wonder," Freydis said,
"and the wondering is a thin little far-off grief."

XVII

Magic of the Image-Makers

It was presently noised abroad that Queen Freydis of Audela had
become a human woman; and thereafter certain enchanters came to
Upper Morven, to seek her counsel and her favor and the aid of
Schamir. These were the enchanters, Manuel was told, who made
images, to which they now and then contrived—nobody seemed to
know quite how, and least of all did the thaumaturgists
themselves,—to impart life.

Once Manuel went with Freydis into a dark place where some of
these magic-workers were at labor. By the light of a charcoal fire,
clay images were ruddily discernible; before these the enchanters
moved unhumanly clad, and doing things which, mercifully perhaps,
were veiled from Manuel by the peculiarly perfumed obscurity.

As Manuel entered the gallery one of the magic-workers was
chaunting shrilly in the darkness below. "It is the unfinished Rune
of the Blackbirds," says Freydis, in a whisper.

Below them the troubled wailing continued:

"—Crammed and squeezed, so entombed (on some wager I
hazard), in spite of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion
that lean-faced Rajah dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta.
Dared you break the crust and bullyrag 'em—hot, fierce and
angry, what wide beaks buzz plain Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot!
Yet, singing, they sing as no white bird does (where none rears
phoenix) as near perfection as nature gets, or, if scowls bar
platitude, notes for which there is no rejection in banks whose
coinage—oh, neat!—is gratitude."

Said, in the darkness, another enchanter:

"But far from their choiring the high King sat, in a gold-faced
vest and a gold-laced hat, counting heaped monies, and dreaming of
more francs and sequins and Louis d'or. Meanwhile the Queen on that
fateful night, though avowing her lack of all appetite, was still
at table, where, rumor said, she was smearing her seventh slice of
bread (thus each turgescible rumor thrives at court) with gold from
the royal hives. Through the slumberous pare, under arching trees,
to her labors went singing the maid Dénise—"

A third broke in here, saying:

"And she sang of how subtle and bitter and bright was a beast
brought forth, that was clad with the splendor and light of the
cold fair ends of the north, like a fleshly blossom more white than
augmenting tempests that go, with thunder for weapon, to ravage the
strait waste fastness of snow. She sang how that all men on earth
said, whether its mistress at morn went forth or waited till
night,—whether she strove through the foam and wreckage of
shallow and firth, or couched in glad fields of corn, or fled from
all human delight,—that thither it likewise would roam."

Now a fourth began:

"Thus sang Dénise, what while the siccant sheets and
coverlets that pillowed kingly dreams, with curious undergarbs of
royalty, she neatly ranged: and dreamed not of that doom which
waited, yet unborn, to strike men dumb with perfect awe. As when
the seventh wave poises, and sunlight cleaves it through and
through with gold, as though to gild oncoming death for him that
sees foredoomed—and, gasping, sees death high and
splendid!—while the tall wave bears down, and its shattering
makes an end of him: thus poised the sable bird while one might
count one, two, and three, and four, and five, and six, but hardly
seven—"

So they continued; but Manuel listened to no more. "What is the
meaning of all this?" he asked, of Freydis.

"It is an experimental incantation," she replied, "in that it is
a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not yet
been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on,
and then this rune will live perpetually, surviving all those
rhymes that are infected with thought and intelligent meanings such
as are repugnant to human nature."

"Are words, then, so important and enduring?"

"Why, Manuel, I am surprised at you! In what else, pray, does
man differ from the other animals except in that he is used by
words?"

"Now I would have said that words are used by men."

"There is give and take, of course, but in the main man is more
subservient to words than they are to him. Why, do you but think of
such terrible words as religion and duty and love, and patriotism
and art, and honor and common-sense, and of what these tyrannizing
words do to and make of people!"

"No, that is chop-logic: for words are only transitory noises,
whereas man is the child of God, and has an immortal spirit."

"Yes, yes, my dearest, I know you believe that, and I think it
is delightfully quaint and sweet of you. But, as I was saying, a
man has only the body of an animal to get experiences in, and the
brain of an animal to think them over with, so that the thoughts
and opinions of the poor dear must remain always those of a more or
less intelligent animal. But his words are very often magic, as you
will comprehend by and by when I have made you the greatest of
image-makers."

"Well, well, but we can let that wait a bit," said Manuel.

And thereafter Manuel talked with Freydis, confessing that the
appearance of these magic-workers troubled Manuel. He had thought
it, he said, an admirable thing to make images that lived, until he
saw and considered the appearance of these habitual makers of
images. They were an ugly and rickety, short-tempered tribe, said
Manuel: they were shiftless, spiteful, untruthful, and in everyday
affairs not far from imbecile: they plainly despised all persons
who could not make images, and they apparently detested all those
who could. With Manuel they were particularly high and mighty,
assuring him that he was only a prosperous and affected
pseudo-magician, and that the harm done by the self-styled
thaumaturgist was apt to be very great indeed. What sort of models,
then, were these insane, mud-moulding solitary wasps for a tall lad
to follow after? And if Manuel acquired their arts (he asked in
conclusion), would he acquire their traits?

"The answer is perhaps no, and not impossibly yes," replied
Freydis. "For by the ancient Tuyla mystery they extract that which
is best in them to inform their images, and this is apt to leave
them empty of virtue. But I would have you consider that their best
endures, whereas that which is best in other persons is obliterated
on some battle-field or mattress or gallows That is why I have been
thinking that this afternoon—"

"No, we will let that wait a bit, for I must turn this over in
my mind," said Manuel, "and my mature opinion about this matter
must be expressed later."

But while his thoughts were on the affair his fingers made him
droll small images of ten of the image-makers, which he set aside
unquickened. Freydis smiled at these caricatures, and asked when
Manuel would give them life.

"Oh, in due time," he said, "and then their antics may be
diverting. But I perceive that this old Tuyla magic is practised at
great price and danger, so that I am in no hurry to practise any
more of it. I prefer to enjoy that which is dearer and better."

"And what can be dearer and better?"

"Youth," Manuel answered, "and you."

Queen Freydis was now a human woman in all things, so this reply
delighted her hearing if not her reason. "Do these two possessions
content you, king of my heart?" she asked him very fondly.

"No," Manuel said, gazing out across Morven at the cloud-dappled
ridges of the Taunenfels, "nor do I look ever to be contented in
this world of men."

"Indeed the run of men are poor thin-minded creatures,
Manuel—"

He answered, moodily:

"But I cannot put aside the thought that these men ought to be
my fellows and my intimates. Instead, I who am a famed champion go
daily in distrust, almost in fear, of these incomprehensible and
shatter-pated beings. To every side there is a feeble madness
over-busy about long-faced nonsense from which I recoil, who must
conceal this shrinking always. There is no hour in my life but I go
armored in reserve and in small lies, and in my armor I am lonely.
Freydis, you protest deep love for this well-armored Manuel, but
what wisdom will reveal to you, or to me either, just what is
Manuel? Oh, but I am puzzled by the impermanence and the loneliness
and the impotence of this Manuel! Dear Freydis, do not love my body
nor my manner of speaking, nor any of the ways that I have in the
flesh, for all these transiencies are mortgaged to the worms. And
that thought also is a grief—"

"Let us not speak of these things! Let us not think of anything
that is horrid, but only of each other!"

"But I cannot put aside the thought that I, who for the while
exist in this mortgaged body, cannot ever get out to you. Freydis,
there is no way in which two persons may meet in this world of men:
we can but exchange, from afar, despairing friendly signals, in the
sure knowledge they will be misinterpreted. So do we pass, each
coming out of a strange woman's womb, each parodied by the flesh of
his parents, each passing futilely, with incommunicative gestures,
toward the womb of a strange grave: and in this jostling we find no
comradeship. No soul may travel upon a bridge of words. Indeed
there is no word for my foiled huge desire to love and to be loved,
just as there is no word for the big, the not quite comprehended
thought which is moving in me at this moment. But that thought also
is a grief—"

Manuel was still looking at the changing green and purple of the
mountains and at the tall clouds trailing northward. The things
that he viewed yonder were all gigantic and lovely, and they seemed
not to be very greatly bothering about humankind.

Then Freydis said: "Let us not think too much, dear, in our
youth. It is such a waste of the glad time, and of the youth that
will not ever be returning—"

"But I cannot put aside the thought that it will never be the
true Manuel whom you will love or even know of, nor can I dismiss
the knowledge that these human senses, through which alone we may
obtain any knowledge of each other, are lying messengers. What can
I ever be to you except flesh and a voice? Nor is this the root of
my sorrowing, dear Freydis. For I know that my distrust of all
living creatures—oh, even of you, dear Freydis, when I draw
you closest,—must always be as a wall between us, a low,
lasting, firm-set wall which we can never pull down. And I know
that I am not really a famed champion, but only a forlorn and
lonely inmate of the doubtful castle of my body; and that I, who
know not truly what I am, must die in this same doubt and
loneliness, behind the strong defences of posturing and bluntness
and jovial laughter which I have raised for my protecting. And that
thought also is a grief."

Now Manuel was as Freydis had not ever seen him. She wondered at
him, she was perturbed by this fine lad's incomprehensible
dreariness, with soft red willing lips so near: and her dark eyes
were bent upon him with a beautiful and tender yearning which may
not be told.

"I do not understand you, my dearest," said she, who was no
longer the high Queen of Audela, but a mortal woman. "It is true
that all the world about us is a false seeming, but you and I are
real and utterly united, for we have no concealments from each
other. I am sure that no two people could be happier than we are,
nor better suited. And certainly such morbid notions are not like
you, who, as you said yourself, only the other day, are naturally
so frank and downright."

Now Manuel's thoughts came back from the clouds and the green
and purple of the mountains. He looked at her very gravely for an
instant or two. He laughed morosely. He said, "There!"

"But, dearest, you are strange and not yourself—

"Yes, yes!" says Manuel, kissing her, "for the moment I had
forgotten to be frank and downright, and all else which you expect
of me. Now I am my old candid, jovial, blunt self again, and I
shall not worry you with such silly notions any more. No, I am
Manuel: I follow after my own thinking and my own desire; and if to
do that begets loneliness I must endure it"

XVIII

Manuel Chooses

"But I cannot understand," said Freydis, on a fine day in
September, "how it is that, now the power of Schamir is in your
control, and you have the secret of giving life to your images, you
do not care to use either the secret or the talisman. For you make
no more images, you are always saying, 'No, we will let that wait a
bit,' and you do not even quicken the ten caricatures of the
image-makers which you have already modeled."

"Life will be given to these in due time," said Manuel, "but
that time is not yet come. Meanwhile, I avoid practise of the old
Tuyla mystery for the sufficing reason that I have seen the result
it has on the practitioner. A geas was upon me to make a figure in
the world, and so I modeled and loaned life to such a splendid gay
young champion as was to my thinking and my desire. Thus my geas, I
take it, is discharged, and a thing done has an end. Heaven may now
excel me by creating a larger number of living figures than I, but
pre-eminence in this matter is not a question of
arithmetic—"

"Ah, yes, my squinting boy has all the virtues, including that
of modesty!"

"Well, but I have seen my notion embodied, seen it take breath,
seen it depart from Morven in all respects, except for a little
limping—which, do you know, I thought rather
graceful?—in well-nigh all respects, I repeat, quite
indistinguishable from the embodied notions of that master
craftsman whom some call Ptha, and others Jahveh, and others
Abraxas, and yet others Koshchei the Deathless. In fine, I have
made a figure more admirable and significant than is the run of
men, and I rest upon my laurels."

"You have created a living being somewhat above the average,
that is true: but then every woman who has a fine baby does just as
much—"

"The principle is not the same," said Manuel, with dignity.

"And why not, please, big boy?"

"For one thing, my image was an original and unaided production,
whereas a baby, I am told, is the result of more or less hasty
collaboration. Then, too a baby is largely chance work, in that its
nature cannot be exactly foreplanned and pre-determined by its
makers, who, in the glow of artistic creation, must, I imagine,
very often fail to follow the best aesthetic canons."

"As for that, nobody who makes new and unexampled things can
make them exactly to the maker's will. Even your image limped, you
remember—"

"Ah, but so gracefully!"

"—No, Manuel, it is only those necromancers who evoke the
dead, and bid the dead return to the warm flesh, that can be
certain as to the results of their sorcery. For these alone of
magic-workers know in advance what they are making."

"Ah, this is news! So you think it is possible to evoke the dead
in some more tangible form than that of an instructive ghost? You
think it possible for a dead girl—or, as to that matter, for
a dead boy, or a defunct archbishop, or a deceased
ragpicker,—to be fetched back to live again in the warm
flesh?"

"All things are possible, Manuel, at a price."

Said Manuel:

"What price would be sufficient to re-purchase the rich spoils
of Death? and whence might any bribe be fetched? For all the
glowing wealth and beauty of this big round world must show as a
new-minted farthing beside his treasure chests, as one slight
shining unimportant coin which—even this also!—belongs
to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet. Presently this
hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, is added to the
heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest in the old
time.

"Now there is garnered such might and loveliness and wisdom as
human thinking cannot conceive of. An emperor is made much of here
when he has conquered some part of the world, but Death makes
nothing of a world of emperors: and in Death's crowded store-rooms
nobody bothers to estimate within a thousand thousand of how many
emperors, and tzars and popes and pharaohs and sultans, that in
their day were adored as omnipotent, are there assembled pellmell,
along with all that was worthiest in the old time.

"As touches loveliness, not even Helen's beauty is
distinguishable among those multitudinous millions of resplendent
queens whom one finds yonder. Here are many pretty women, here
above all is Freydis, so I do not complain. But yonder is
deep-bosomed Semiramis, and fair-tressed Guenevere, and Magdalene
that loved Christ, and Europa, the bull's laughing bride, and
Lilith, whose hot kiss made Satan ardent, and a many other ladies
by whose dear beauty's might were shaped the songs which cause us
to remember all that was worthiest in the old time.

"As wisdom goes, here we have prudent men of business able to
add two and two together, and justice may be out of hand
distinguished from injustice by an impanelment of the nearest
twelve fools. Here we have many Helmases a-cackling wisely under a
goose-feather. But yonder are Cato and Nestor and Merlin and
Socrates, Abelard sits with Aristotle there, and the seven sages
confer with the major prophets, and yonder is all that was
worthiest in the old time.

"All, all, are put away in Death's heaped store-rooms, so safely
put away that opulent Death may well grin scornfully at Life: for
everything belongs to Death, and Life is only a mendicant
scratching at his sores so long as Death permits it. No, Freydis,
there can be no bribing Death! For what bribe anywhere has Life to
offer which Death has not already lying disregarded in a thousand
dusty coffers along with all that was worthiest in the old
time?"

Freydis replied: "One thing alone. Yes, Manuel, there is one
thing only which all Death's ravishings have never taken from Life,
and which has not ever entered into Death's keeping. It is through
weighing this fact, and through doing what else is requisite, that
the very bold may bring back the dead to live again in the warm
flesh."

"Well, but I have heard the histories of presumptuous men who
attempted to perform such miracles, and all these persons sooner or
later came to misery."

"Why, to be sure! to whom else would you have them coming?" said
Freydis. And she explained the way it was.

Manuel put many questions. All that evening he was thoughtful,
and he was unusually tender with Freydis. And that night, when
Freydis slept, Dom Manuel kissed her very lightly, then blinked his
eyes, and for a moment covered them with his hand. Standing thus,
the tall boy queerly moving his mouth, as though it were stiff and
he were trying to make it more supple.

Then he armed himself. He took up the black shield upon which
was painted a silver stallion. He crept out of their modest magic
home and went down into Bellegarde, where he stole him a horse,
from the stables of Duke Asmund.

And that night, and all the next day, Dom Manuel rode beyond
Aigremont and Naimes, journeying away from Morven, and away from
the house of jasper and porphyry and violet and yellow breccia, and
away from Freydis, who had put off immortality for his kisses. He
travelled northward, toward the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, where
the leaves were aglow with the funereal flames of autumn: for the
summer wherein Dom Manuel and Freydis had been happy together was
now as dead as that estranged queer time which he had shared with
Alianora.

XIX

The Head of Misery

When Manuel had reached the outskirts of the forest he
encountered there a knight in vermilion armor, with a woman's
sleeve wreathed about his helmet: and, first of all, this knight
demanded who was Manuel's lady love.

"I have no living love," said Manuel, "except the woman whom I
am leaving without ceremony, because it seems the only way to
avoiding argument."

"But that is unchivalrous, and does not look well."

"Very probably you are right, but I am not chivalrous. I am
Manuel. I follow after my own thinking, and an obligation is upon
me pointing toward prompt employment of the knowledge I have gained
from this woman."

"You are a rascally betrayer of women, then, and an unmanly
scoundrel."

"Yes, I suppose so, for I betrayed another woman, in that I
permitted and indeed assisted her to die in my stead; and so
brought yet another bond upon myself, and an obligation which is
drawing me from a homelike place and from soft arms wherein I was
content enough," says Manuel, sighing.

But the chivalrous adventurer in red armor was disgusted. "Oh,
you tall squinting villain knight of the silver stallion, I wonder
from whose court you can be coming, where they teach no better
behavior than woman-killing, and I wonder what foul new knavery you
can be planning here."

"Why, I was last in residence at Raymond Bérenger's
court," says Manuel: "and since you are bent on knowing about my
private affairs, I come to this forest in search of Béda, or
Kruchina, or whatever you call the Misery of earth in these
parts."

"Aha, and are you one of Raymond Bérenger's friends?"

"Yes, I suppose so," says Manuel, blinking,—"yes, I
suppose so, since I have prevented his being poisoned."

"This is good hearing, for I have always been one of Raymond
Bérenger's enemies, and all such of his friends as I have
encountered I have slain."

"Doubtless you have your reasons", said Manuel, and would have
ridden by.

But the other cried furiously, "Turn, you tall fool! Turn,
cowardly betrayer of women!"

He came upon Manuel like a whirlwind, and Manuel had no choice
in the matter. So they fought, and presently Manuel brought the
vermilion knight to the ground, and, dismounting, killed him. It
was noticeable that from the death-wound came no blood, but only a
flowing of very fine black sand, out of which scrambled and hastily
scampered away a small vermilion-colored mouse.

Then Manuel said, "I think that this must be the peculiarly
irrational part of the forest, to which I was directed, and I
wonder what may have been this scarlet squabbler's grievance
against King Raymond Bérenger?"

Nobody answered, so Manuel remounted, and rode on.

Count Manuel skirted the Wolflake, and came to a hut, painted
gray, that stood clear of the ground, upon the bones of four great
birds' feet. Upon the four corners of the hunt were carved
severally the figures of a lion, a dragon, a cockatrice and an
adder, to proclaim the miseries of carnal and intellectual sin, and
of pride, and of death.

Here Manuel tethered his horse to a holm-oak. He raised both
arms, facing the East.

"Do you now speed me!" cried Manuel, "ye thirty Barami! O all ye
powers of accumulated merit, O most high masters of Almsgiving, of
Morality, of Relinquishment, of Wisdom, of Fortitude, of Patience,
of Truth, of Determination, of Charity, and of Equanimity! do all
you aid me in my encounter with the Misery of earth!"

He piously crossed himself, and went into the hut. Inside, the
walls were adorned with very old-looking frescoes that were equally
innocent of perspective and reticence: the floor was of tessellated
bronze. In each corner Manuel found, set upright, a many-storied
umbrella of the kind used for sacred purposes in the East: each of
these had a silver handle, and was worked in nine colors. But most
important of all, so Manuel had been told, was the pumpkin which
stood opposite to the doorway.

Manuel kindled a fire, and prepared the proper kind of soup: and
at sunset he went to the window of the hut, and cried out three
times that supper was ready.

One answered him, "I am coming."

Manuel waited. There was now no sound in the forest: even the
few birds not yet gone south, that had been chirping of the day's
adventures, were hushed on a sudden, and the breeze died in the
tree-tops. Inside the hut Manuel lighted his four candles, and he
disposed of one under each umbrella in the prescribed manner. His
footsteps on the bronze flooring, and the rustling of his garments
as he went about the hut doing what was requisite, were
surprisingly sharp and distinct noises in a vast silence and in an
illimitable loneliness.

Then said a thin little voice, "Manuel, open the door!"

Manuel obeyed, and you could see nobody anywhere in the forest's
dusk. The twilit brown and yellow trees were still as paintings.
His horse stood tethered and quite motionless, except that it was
shivering.

One spoke at his feet. "Manuel, lift me over the threshold!"

Dom Manuel, recoiling, looked downward, and in the patch of
candlelight between the shadows of his legs you could see a human
head. He raised the head, and carried it into the hut. He could now
perceive that the head was made of white clay, and could deduce
that the Misery of earth, whom some call Béda, and others
Kruchina, had come to him.

"Now, Manuel," says Misery, "do you give me my supper."

So Manuel set the head upon the table, and put a platter of soup
before the head, and fed the soup to Misery with a gold spoon.

When the head had supped, it bade Manuel place it in the little
bamboo cradle, and told Manuel to put out the lights. Many persons
would not have fancied being alone in the dark with Misery, but
Manuel obeyed. He knelt to begin his nightly prayer, but at once
that happened which induced him to desist. So without his usual
divine invocation, Dom Manuel lay down upon the bronze floor of the
hut, beneath one of the tall umbrellas, and he rolled up his russet
cloak for a pillow. Presently the head was snoring, and then Manuel
too went to sleep. He said, later, that he dreamed of Niafer.

XX

The Month of Years

In the morning, after doing the head's extraordinary bidding,
Manuel went to feed his horse, and found tethered to the holm-oak
the steed's skeleton picked clean. "I grieve at this," said Manuel,
"but I consider it wiser to make no complaint." Indeed, there was
nobody to complain to, for Misery, after having been again lifted
over the threshold, had departed to put in a day's labor with the
plague in the north.

Thereafter Manuel abode in this peculiarly irrational part of
the forest, serving Misery for, as men in cheerier places were
estimating the time, a month and a day. Of these services it is
better not to speak. But the head was pleased by Manuel's services,
because Misery loves company: and the two used to have long
friendly talks together when Manuel's services and Misery's work
for that day were over.

"And how came you, sir, to be thus housed in a trunkless head?"
asked Manuel, one time.

"Why, when Jahveh created man on the morning of the sixth day,
he set about fashioning me that afternoon from the clay which was
left over. But he was interrupted by the coming of the Sabbath, for
Jahveh was in those days, of course, a very orthodox Jew. So I was
left incomplete, and must remain so always."

"I deduce that you, then, sir, are Heaven's last crowning work,
and the final finishing touch to creation."

"So the pessimists tell me," the clay head assented, with a
yawn. "But I have had a hard day of it, what with the pestilence in
Glathion, and wars between the Emperor and the Milanese, and all
those October colds, so we will talk no more philosophy."

Thus Manuel served the head of Misery, for a month of days and a
day. It was a noticeable peculiarity of this part of the
forest—a peculiarity well known to everybody, though not
quite unanimously explained by the learned,—that each day
which one spent therein passed as a year, so that Dom Manuel in
appearance now aged rapidly. This was unfortunate, especially when
his teeth began to fail him, because there were no dentists handy,
but his interest in the other Plagues which visited this forest
left Manuel little time wherein to think about private worries. For
Béda was visited by many of his kindred, such as Mitlan and
Kali and Thragnar and Pwyll and Apepi and other evil principles,
who were perpetually coming to the gray hut for family reunions,
and to rehearse all but one of the two hundred and forty thousand
spells of the Capuas. And it was at this time that Manuel got his
first glimpse of Sclaug, with whom he had such famous troubles
later.

So sped the month of days that passed as years. Little is known
as to what happened in the gray hut, but that perhaps is a good
thing. Dom Manuel never talked about it. This much is known, that
all day the clay head would be roving about the world, carrying
envious reports, and devouring kingdoms, and stirring up patriotism
and reform, and whispering malefic counsel, and bringing hurt and
sorrow and despair and evil of every kind to men; and that in the
evening, when at sunset Phobetor took over this lamentable work,
Béda would return contentedly to Dun Vlechlan, for Manuel's
services and a well-earned night's rest. On most evenings there was
unspeakable company, but none of these stayed overnight. And after
each night passed alone with Misery, the morning would find Manuel
older looking.

"I wonder, sir, at your callousness, and at the cheery way in
which you go about your dreadful business," said Manuel, once,
after he had just cleansed the dripping jaws.

"Ah, but since I am all head and no heart, therefore I cannot
well pity the human beings whom I pursue as a matter of allotted
duty."

"That seems plausible," says Manuel, "and I perceive that if
appearances are to be trusted you are not personally to blame.
Still, I cannot but wonder why the world of men should thus be
given over to Misery if Koshchei the Deathless, who made all things
as they are, has any care for men."

"As to what goes on overhead, Manuel, you must inquire of
others. There are persons in charge, I know, but they have never
yet permitted Misery to enter into their high places, for I am not
popular with them, and that is the truth."

"I can understand that, but nevertheless I wonder why Misery
should have been created to feed upon mankind."

"Probably the cows and sheep and chickens in your barnyards, and
the partridges and rabbits in your snares, and even the gasping
fish upon your hook, find time to wonder in the same way about you,
Dom Manuel."

"Ah, but man is the higher form of life—"

"Granting that remarkable assumption, and is any man above
Misery? So you see it is logical I should feed on you."

"Still, I believe that the Misery of earth was devised as a
trial and a testing to fit us for some nobler and eternal life
hereafter."

"Why in this world should you think that?" the head inquired,
with real interest.

"Because I have an immortal spirit, sir, and—"

"Dear me, but all this is very remarkable. Where is it,
Manuel?"

"It is inside me somewhere, sir."

"Come, then, let us have it out, for I am curious to see
it."

"No, it cannot get out exactly, sir, until I am dead."

"But what use will it be to you then?" said Misery: "and how can
you, who have not ever been dead, be certain as to what happens
when one is dead?"

"Well, I have always heard so, sir."

The head shook itself dubiously. "Now from whom of the
Léshy, I wonder, can you have been hearing such fantastic
stories? I am afraid somebody has been making fun of you,
Manuel."

"Oh, no, sir, this is a tenet held by the wisest and most
admirable of men."

"I see: it was some other man who told you all these drolleries
about the eternal importance of mankind," the head observed, with
an unaccountable slackening of interest. "I see: and again, you may
notice that the cows and the sheep and the chickens, also, resent
extinction strenuously."

"But these are creatures of the earth, sir, whereas there is
about at any rate some persons a whiff of divinity. Come now, do
you not find it so?"

The head looked graver. "Yes, Manuel, most young people have in
them a spark which is divine, but it is living that snuffs this out
of all of you, by and large, without bothering Grandfather Death to
unpeel spirits like bananas. No, the most of you go with very
little spirit, if any, into the grave, and assuredly with not
enough spirit to last you forever. No, Manuel, no, I never quarrel
with religion, because it is almost the strongest ally I have, but
these religious notions rather disgust me sometimes, for if men
were immortal then Misery would be immortal, and I could never
survive that."

"Now you are talking nonsense, sir," said Manuel, stoutly, "and
of all sorts of nonsense cynical nonsense is the worst."

"By no means," replied the head, "since, plainly, it is far
worse nonsense to assert that omnipotence would insanely elect to
pass eternity with you humans. No, Manuel, I am afraid that your
queer theory, about your being stuffed inside with permanent
material and so on, does not very plausibly account for either your
existence or mine, and that we both stay riddles without
answers."

"Still, sir," said Manuel, "inasmuch as there is one thing only
which all death's ravishings have never taken from life, and that
thing is the Misery of earth—"

"Your premiss is indisputable, but what do you deduce from
this?"

Manuel smiled slowly and sleepily. "I deduce, sir, that you,
also, who have not ever been dead, cannot possibly be certain as to
what happens when one is dead. And so I shall stick to my own
opinion about the life to come."

"But your opinion is absurd, on the face of it."

"That may very well be, sir, but it is much more comfortable to
live with than is your opinion, and living is my occupation just
now. Dying I shall attend to in its due turn, and, of the two, my
opinion is the more pleasant to die with. Thereafter, if your
opinion be right, I shall never even know that my opinion was
wrong: so that I have everything to gain, in the way of pleasurable
anticipations anyhow, and I have nothing whatever to lose, by
clinging to the foolish fond old faith which my fathers had before
me," said Manuel, as sturdily as ever.

"Yes, but how in this world—?"

"Ah, sir," says Manuel, still smiling, "in this world men are
nourished by their beliefs; and it well may be that, yonder also,
their sustenance is the same."

But at this moment came Reeri (a little crimson naked man,
having the head of a monkey) with his cock in one hand and his
gnarled club in the other. Necessarily the Blood Demon's arrival
put an end to their talking, for that turn.

XXI

Touching Repayment

So Count Manuel's youth went out of him as he became more and
more intimate with Misery, and an attachment sprang up between
them, and the two took counsel as to all Manuel's affairs. They
often talked of the royal ladies whom Manuel had loved and loved no
longer.

"For at one time," Manuel admitted, "I certainly fancied myself
in love with the Princess Alianora, and at another time I was in
love with Queen Freydis. And even now I like them well enough, but
neither of these royal ladies could make me forget the slave girl
Niafer whom I loved on Vraidex. Besides, the Princess and the Queen
were fond of having their own way about everything, and they were
bent on hampering me with power and wealth and lofty station and
such other obstacles to the following of my own thinking and my own
desires. I could not endure the eternal arguing this led to, which
was always reminding me, by contrast, of the quiet dear ways of
Niafer and of the delight I had in the ways of Niafer. So it seemed
best for everyone concerned for me to break off with Freydis and
Alianora."

"As for these women," the head estimated, "you may be for some
reasons well rid of them. Yet this Alianora has fine eyes and
certain powers."

"She is a princess of the Apsarasas," Manuel replied, "and
therefore she has power over the butterflies and the birds and the
bats, and over all creatures of the air. I know, because she has
disclosed to me some of the secrets of the Apsarasas. But over her
own tongue and temper the Princess Alianora has no power and no
control whatever, and if I had married her she would have
eventually pestered me into being a king, and giving my life over
to politics and the dominion of men."

"This Freydis, too, has beautiful black hair—and certain
powers—"

"She was once Queen of Audela, and therefore she retains power
over all figures of earth. I know, because she has disclosed to me
some of the secrets of Audela. But the worst enemy of Freydis also
goes in red, and is housed by the little white teeth of Freydis,
for it was this enemy that betrayed her: and if I had married her
she would have coaxed me, by and by, into becoming a great maker of
images, and giving my life over to such arts."

Misery said: "You have had love from these women, you have
gained power and knowledge from these women. Therefore you leave
them, to run after some other woman who can give you no power and
knowledge, but only a vast deal of trouble. It is not heroic,
Manuel, but it is human, and your reasoning is well fitted to your
time of life."

"It is true that I am young as yet, sir—"

"No, not so very young, for my society is maturing you, and
already you are foreplanning and talking the follies of a man in
middle life."

"No matter what my age may come to be, sir, I shall always
remember that when I first set up as a champion, and was newly come
from living modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs, I loved
the slave girl Niafer. She died. I did not die. Instead, I
relinquished Niafer to Grandfather Death, and at that price I
preserved my own life and procured a recipe through which I have
prospered unbelievably, so that I am today a nobleman with fine
clothes and lackeys, and with meadow-lands and castles of my own,
if only I could obtain them. So I no longer go ragged at the
elbows, and royal ladies look upon me favorably, and I find them
well enough. But the joy I took in Niafer is not to be found in any
of these things."

"That too is an old human story," the head said, "and yours is a
delusion that comes to most men in middle life. However, for a
month of years you have served me faithfully, except for twice
having failed to put enough venom in my soup, and for having
forgotten to fetch in any ice that evening the Old Black One was
here. Still, nobody is perfect; your time of service is out; and I
must repay you as need is. Will you have happiness, then, and an
eternal severance between you and me?"

"I have seen but one happy person," Manuel replied. "He sat in a
dry ditch, displaying vacant glittering eyes, and straws were
tangled in his hair, but Tom o' Bedlam was quite happy. No, it is
not happiness I desire."

The head repeated: "You have served me. I repay, as need is,
with the payment you demand. What is it you demand?"

Dom Manuel said, "I demand that Niafer who was a slave girl, and
is now a ghost in her pagan paradise."

"Do you think, then, that to recall the dead is possible?"

"You are cunning, sir, but I remember what Freydis told me. Will
you swear that Misery cannot bring back the dead?"

"Very willingly I will swear to it, upon all the most authentic
relics in Christendom."

"Ah, yes, but will you rest one of your cold hard pointed ears
against"—here Manuel whispered what he did not care to name
aloud,—"the while that you swear to it."

"Of course not," Misery answered, sullenly: "since every
troubled ghost that ever gibbered and clanked chains would rise
confronting me if I made such an oath. Yes, Manuel, I am able to
bring back the dead, but prudence forces me to lie about my power,
because to exercise that power to the full would be well-nigh as
ruinous as the breaking of that pumpkin. For there is only one way
to bring back the dead in flesh, and if I follow that way I shall
lose my head as all the others have done."

"What is that to a lover?" says Manuel.

The head sighed, and bit at its white lips. "An oath is an oath
to the Léshy. Therefore do you, who are human, now make
profitable use of the knowledge and of the power you get from those
other women by breaking oaths! And as you have served me, so will I
serve you."

Manuel called black eagles to him, in the manner the Princess
Alianora had taught, and he sent them into all parts of the world
for every sort of white earth. They obeyed the magic of the
Apsarasas, and from Britain they brought Dom Manuel the earth
called leucargillon, and they brought glisomarga from Enisgarth,
and eglecopala from the Gallic provinces, and argentaria from Lacre
Kai, and white earth of every description from all parts of the
world.

Manuel made from this earth, as Queen Freydis had taught him how
to do, the body of a woman. He fashioned the body peculiarly, in
accordance with the old Tuyla mystery, and the body was as perfect
as Manuel could make it, in all ways save that it had no head.

Then Manuel sent a gold-crested wren into Provence: it entered
through an upper window of the King's marmoreal palace, and went
into the Princess Alianora's chamber, and fetched hence a
handkerchief figured with yellow mulberries and wet with the tears
which Alianora had shed in her grieving for Manuel. And Dom Manuel
sent also a falcon, which returned to him with Queen Freydis'
handkerchief. That was figured with white fleurs-de-lis, and that
too was drenched with tears.

Whereupon, all being in readiness, Misery smiled craftily, and
said:

"In the time that is passed I have overthrown high kings and
prophets, and sorcerers also, as when Misery half carelessly made
sport of Mithridates and of Merlin and of Moses, in ways that
ballad-singers still delight to tell of. But with you, Dom Manuel,
I shall deal otherwise, and I shall disconcert you by and by in a
more quiet fashion. Hoh, I must grapple carefully with your love
for Niafer, as with an antagonist who is not scrupulous, nor very
sensible, but who is exceedingly strong. For observe: you
obstinately desire this perished heathen woman, who in life, it
well may be, was nothing remarkable. Therefore you have sought
Misery, you have dwelt for a month of years with terror, you have
surrendered youth, you are planning to defy death, you are intent
to rob the deep grave and to despoil paradise. Truly your love is
great."

Manuel said only, "An obligation is upon me, for the life of
Niafer was given to preserve my life."

"Now I, whom some call Béda, and others Kruchina, and
whom for the present your love has conquered—I it is, alone,
who can obtain for you this woman, because in the long run I
overcome all things and persons. Life is my province, and the birth
cry of every infant is an oath of allegiance to me. Thus I am
overlord where all serve willy-nilly except you, who have served of
your own will. And as you have served me, so must I serve you."

Manuel said, "That is well"

"It is not so well as you think, for when you have this Niafer I
shall return to you in the appearance of a light formless cloud,
and I shall rise about you, not suddenly but a little by a little.
So shall you see through me the woman for love of whom your living
was once made high-hearted and fearless, and for whose sake death
was derided, and paradise was ransacked: and you will ask
forlornly, 'Was it for this?' Throughout the orderly, busied,
unimportant hours that stretch between your dressing for the day
and your undressing for the night, you will be asking this question
secretly in your heart, while I pass everywhither with you in the
appearance of a light formless cloud, and whisper to you
secretly."

"And what will you whisper to me?"

"Not anything which you will care to repeat to anybody anywhere.
Oh, you will be able to endure it, and you will be content, as
human contentment goes, and my triumph will not be public. But,
none the less, I shall have overthrown my present conqueror, and I
shall have brought low the love which terror and death did not
affright, and which the laws of earth could not control; and I,
whom some call Béda, and others Kruchina, will very terribly
attest that the ghost of outlived and conquered misery is
common-sense."

"That is to-morrow's affair," replied Dom Manuel "To-day there
is an obligation upon me, and my dealings are with to-day."

Then Manuel bound the clay head of Misery in the two
handkerchiefs which were wet with the tears of Alianora and of
Freydis. When the cock had crowed three times, Dom Manuel unbound
the head, and it was only a shapeless mass of white clay, because
of the tears of Freydis and Alianora.

Manuel modeled in this clay, to the best of his ability, the
head of Niafer, as he remembered her when they had loved each other
upon Vraidex: and after the white head was finished he fitted it to
the body which he had made from the other kinds of white earth. Dom
Manuel robed this body in brown drugget such as Niafer had been
used to wear in and about the kitchen at Arnaye, and he did the
other things that were requisite, for this was the day of All
Saints when nothing sacred ought to be neglected.

XXII

Return of Niafer

Now the tale tells how Dom Manuel sat at the feet of the image
and played upon a flageolet. There was wizardry in the music, Dom
Manuel said afterward, for he declared that it evoked in him a
vision and a restless dreaming that followed after Misery.

So this dreaming showed that when Misery was dispossessed of the
earth he entered (because Misery is unchristian) into the paradise
of the pagans, where Niafer, dead now for something over a year,
went restlessly in bliss: and Misery came shortly afterward to
Niafer, and talked with her in a thin little voice. She listened
willingly to this talk of Manuel and of the adventures which Niafer
had shared with Manuel: and now that she remembered Manuel, and his
clear young face and bright unequal eyes and his strong arms, she
could no longer be even moderately content in the paradise of the
pagans.

Thereafter Misery went about the heathens' paradise in the
appearance of a light formless cloud. And the fields of this
paradise seemed less green, the air became less pure and balmy, and
the sky less radiant, and the waters of the paradisal river
Eridanus grew muddy. The poets became tired of hearing one another
recite, the heroes lost delight in their wrestling and chariot
racing and in their exercises with the spear and the bow. "How can
anybody expect us to waste eternity with recreations which are only
fitted to waste time?" they demanded.

And the lovely ladies began to find the handsome lovers with
whom they wandered hand in hand through never-fading groves of
myrtle, and with whom they were forever reunited, rather tedious
companions.

"I love you," said the lovers.

"You have been telling me that for twelve centuries," replied
the ladies, yawning, "and too much of anything is enough."

"Upon my body, I think so too," declared the lovers. "I said it
only out of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I
am as tired of this lackadaisical idiocy as you are."

So everything was at sixes and sevens in this paradise: and when
the mischief-maker was detected, the blessed held a meeting, for it
was now the day of All Souls, on which the dead have privilege.

"We must preserve appearances," said these dead pagans, "and can
have only happy-looking persons hereabouts, for otherwise our
paradise will get a poor name, and the religion of our fathers will
fall into disrepute."

Then they thrust Misery, and Niafer also, out of the pagan
paradise, because Misery clung to Niafer in the appearance of a
light formless cloud, and there was no separating the two.

These two turned earthward together, and came to the river of
sweat called Rigjon. Niafer said to the fiery angel Sandalfon that
guards the bridge there, "The Misery of earth is with me."

Sandalfon saw that this was so, and answered, "My fires cannot
consume the Misery of earth."

They came to Hadarniel, the noisy angel whose, whispering is the
thunder. Niafer said, "The Misery of earth is with me."

Hadarniel replied, "Before the Misery of earth I am silent."

They came to Kemuel and his twelve thousand angels of
destruction that guard the outermost gateway. Niafer said, "The
Misery of earth is with me."

Kemuel answered, "I ruin and make an end of all things else, but
for the Misery of earth I have contrived no ending."

So Misery and Niafer passed all the warders of this paradise:
and in a dim country on the world's rim the blended spirit of
Misery and the ghost of Niafer rose through a hole in the ground,
like an imponderable vapor. They dissevered each from the other in
a gray place overgrown with poplars, and Misery cried farewell to
Niafer.

"And very heartily do I thank you for your kindness, now that we
part, and now that, it may be, I shall not ever see you again,"
said Niafer, politely.

Misery replied:

"Take no fear for not seeing me again, now that you are about
once more to become human. Certainly, Niafer, I must leave you for
a little while, but certainly I shall return. There will first be
for you much kissing and soft laughter, and the quiet happy
ordering of your home, and the heart-shaking wonder of the child
who is neither you nor Manuel, but both of you, and whose life was
not ever seen before on earth: and life will burgeon with white
miracles, and every blossom you will take to be eternal. Laughing,
you will say of sorrow, 'What is it?' And I, whom some call
Béda, and others call Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused
by this.

"Then your seeing will have my help, and you will observe that
Manuel is very much like other persons. He will be used to having
you about, and you him, and that will be the sorry bond between
you. The children that have reft their flesh from your flesh
ruthlessly, and that have derived their living from your glad
anguish, each day will, be appearing a little less intimately
yours, until these children find their mates. Thereafter you will
be a tolerated intruder into these children's daily living, and
nobody anywhere will do more than condone your coming: you will
weep secretly: and I, whom some call Béda, and others call
Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by this.

"Then I shall certainly return to you, when your tears are
dried, and when you no longer believe what young Niafer once
believed; and when, remembering young Niafer's desires and her
intentions as to the disposal of her life, you will shrug withered
shoulders. To go on living will remain desirable. The dilapidations
of life will no longer move you deeply. Shrugging, you will say of
sorrow, 'What is it?' for you will know grief also to be
impermanent. And your inability to be quite miserable any more will
assure you that your goings are attended by the ghost of outlived
and conquered misery: and I, whom some call Béda, and others
call Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by this."

Said Niafer, impatiently, "Do you intend to keep me here forever
under these dark twinkling trees, with your thin little talking,
while Manuel stays unhappy through his want of me?"

And Misery answered nothing as he departed from Niafer, for a
season.

Such were the happenings in the vision witnessed by Dom Manuel
(as Dom Manuel afterward declared) while he sat playing upon the
flageolet.

XXIII

Manuel Gets His Desire

Now the tale tells that all this while, near the gray hut in Dun
Vlechlan, the earthen image of Niafer lay drying out in the
November sun; and that gray Dom Manuel—no longer the florid
boy who had come into Dun Vlechlan,—sat at the feet of the
image, and played upon a flageolet the air which Suskind had taught
him, and with which he had been used to call young Suskind from her
twilit places when Manuel was a peasant tending swine. Now Manuel
was an aging nobleman, and Niafer was now a homeless ghost, but the
tune had power over them, none the less, for its burden was young
love and the high-hearted time of youth; so that the melody which
once had summoned Suskind from her low red-pillared palace in the
doubtful twilight, now summoned Niafer resistlessly from paradise,
as Manuel thriftily made use of the odds and ends which he had
learned from three women to win him a fourth woman.

The spirit of Niafer entered at the mouth of the image.
Instantly the head sneezed, and said, "I am unhappy." But Manuel
kept on playing. The spirit descended further, bringing life to the
lungs and the belly, so that the image then cried, "I am hungry."
But Manuel kept on playing. So the soul was drawn further and
further, until Manuel saw that the white image had taken on the
colors of flesh, and was moving its toes in time to his playing;
and so knew that the entire body was informed with life.

He cast down the flageolet, and touched the breast of the image
with the ancient formal gestures of the old Tuyla mystery, and he
sealed the mouth of the image with a kiss, so that the spirit of
Niafer was imprisoned in the image which Manuel had made. Under his
lips the lips which had been Misery's cried, "I love." And Niafer
rose, a living girl just such as Manuel had remembered for more
than a whole year: but with that kiss all memories of paradise and
all the traits of angelhood departed from her.

"Well, well, dear snip," said Manuel, the first thing of all,
"now it is certainly a comfort to have you back again."

Niafer, even in the rapture of her happiness, found this an
unimpassioned greeting from one who had gone to unusual lengths to
recover her companionship. Staring, she saw that Manuel had all the
marks of a man in middle life, and spoke as became appearances. For
it was at the price of his youth that Manuel had recovered the
woman whom his youth desired: and Misery had subtly evened matters
by awarding an aging man the woman for whose sake a lad had
fearlessly served Misery. There was no longer any such lad, for the
conquered had destroyed the conqueror.

Then, after a moment's consideration of this tall gray stranger,
Niafer also looked graver and older. Niafer asked for a mirror: and
Manuel had none.

"Now but certainly I must know at once just how faithfully you
have remembered me," says Niafer.

He led the way into the naked and desolate November forest, and
they came to the steel-colored Wolflake hard by the gray hut: and
Niafer found she was limping, for Manuel had not got her legs quite
right, so that for the rest of her second life she was lame. Then
Niafer gazed for a minute, or it might be for two minutes, at her
reflection in the deep cold waters of the Wolflake.

"Is this as near as you have come to remembering me, my
dearest!" she said, dejectedly, as she looked down at Manuel's
notion of her face. For the appearance which Niafer now wore she
found to be very little like that which Niafer remembered as having
been hers, in days wherein she had been tolerably familiar with the
Lady Gisèle's mirrors; and it was a grief to Niafer to see
how utterly the dearest dead go out of mind in no long while.

"I have forgotten not one line or curve of your features," says
Manuel, stoutly, "in all these months, nor in any of these last
days that have passed as years. And when my love spurred me to make
your image, Niafer, my love loaned me unwonted cunning. Even by
ordinary, they tell me, I have some skill at making images: and
while not for a moment would I seem to boast of that skill, and not
for worlds would I annoy you by repeating any of the complimentary
things which have been said about my images,—by persons
somewhat more appreciative, my dear, of the toil and care that goes
to work of this sort,—I certainly think that in this instance
nobody has fair reason to complain."

She looked at his face now: and she noted what the month of
living with Béda, with whom a day is as a year, had done to
the boy's face which she remembered. Count Manuel's face was of
remodeled stuff: youth had gone out of it, and the month of years
had etched wrinkles in it, success had hardened and caution had
pinched and self-complacency had kissed it. And Niafer sighed
again, as they sat reunited under leafless trees by the
steel-colored Wolflake.

"There is no circumventing time and death, then, after all,"
said Niafer, "for neither of us is now the person that ascended
Vraidex. No matter: I love you, Manuel, and I am content with what
remains of you: and if the body you have given me is to your will
it is to my will."

But now three rascally tall ragged fellows, each blind in one
eye, and each having a thin peaked beard, came into the opening
before the gray hut, trampling the dead leaves there as they
shouted for Mimir. "Come out!" they cried: "come out, you miserable
Mirmir, and face those three whom you have wronged!"

Dom Manuel rose from the bank of the Wolflake, and went toward
the shouters. "There is no Mimir," he told them, "in Dun Vlechlan,
or not at least in this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest."

"You lie," they said, "for even though you have hitched a body
to your head we recognize you." They looked at Niafer, and all
three laughed cruelly. "Was it for this hunched, draggled,
mud-faced wench that you left us, you squinting old villain? And
have you so soon forgotten the vintner's parlor at
Neogréant, and what you did with the gold plates?"

"No, I have not forgotten these things, for I never knew
anything about them," said Manuel.

Said one of the knaves, twirling fiercely his moustachios: "Hah,
shameless Mimir, do you look at me, who have known you and your
blind son Oriander, too, to be unblushing knaves for these nine
centuries! Now, I suppose, you will be denying the affair of the
squirrel also?"

"Oh, be off with your nonsense!" says Manuel, "for I have not
yet had twenty-two years of living, and I never saw you before, and
I hope never to see you again."

But they all set upon him with cutlasses, so there was nothing
remaining save to have out his sword and fight. And when each of
these one-eyed persons had vanished curiously under his
death-wound, Manuel told Niafer it was a comfort to find that the
month of years had left him a fair swordsman for all that his youth
was gone; and that he thought they had better be leaving this part
of the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, wherein unaccountable things
took place, and all persons behaved unreasonably.

"Were these wood-spirits unreasonable," asks Niafer, "in saying
that the countenance and the body you have given me are ugly?"

"My dear," replied Manuel, "it was their saying that which made
me try to avoid the conflict, because it does not look well, not
even in dealing with demons, to injure the insane."

"Manuel, and can it be you who are considering appearances?"

Dom Manuel said gravely: "My dealings with Misery and with
Misery's kindred have taught me many things which I shall never
forget nor very willingly talk about. One of these teachings,
though, is that in most affairs there is a middle road on which
there is little traffic and comparatively easy going. I must tell
you that the company I have been in required a great deal of
humoring, for of course it is not safe to trifle with any evil
principle. No, no, one need not absolutely and openly defy
convention, I perceive, in order to follow after one's own
thinking," says Manuel, shrewdly, and waggling a gray beard.

"I am so glad you have learned that at last! At least, I
suppose, I am glad," said Niafer, a little wistfully, as she
recalled young Manuel of the high head.

"But, as I was saying, I now estimate that these tattered
persons who would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red
fellow that would have hindered my entering, this peculiarly
irrational part of the forest, were spiritual intruders into
Misery's domain whom Misery had driven out of their wits. No,
Niafer, I voice no criticism, because with us two this Misery of
earth, whom some call Béda, and others Kruchina, has dealt
very handsomely. It troubles me to suspect that he was also called
Mimir; but of this we need not speak, because a thing done has an
end, even a killed grandfather. Nevertheless, I think that Dun
Vlechlan is unwholesome, and I am of the opinion that you and I
will be more comfortable elsewhere."

"But must we go back to looking after pigs, dear Manuel, or are
you now too old for that?"

Dom Manuel smiled, and you saw that he retained at least his
former lordliness. "No, now that every obligation is lifted, and we
are reunited, dear snip, I can at last go traveling everywhither,
so that I may see the ends of this world and judge them. And we
will do whatever else we choose, for, as I must tell you, I am now
a nobleman with lackeys and meadowlands and castles of my own, if
only I could obtain possession of them."

"This is excellent hearing," said Niafer, "and much better than
pig-stealing, and I am glad that the world has had sense enough to
appreciate you, Manuel, and you it. And we will have rubies in my
coronet, because I always fancied them. Now do you tell me how it
all happened, and what I am to be called countess of. And we will
talk about that traveling later, for I have already traveled a
great distance today, but we must certainly have rubies."

XXIV

Three Women

So Manuel put on his armor, and with Manuel telling as much as
he thought wise of the adventures which he had encountered while
Niafer was dead, they left this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest, and fared out of the ruined November woods; and presently,
in those barren fields that descend toward the sand dunes of
Quentavic, came face to face with Queen Freydis and the Princess
Alianora, where these two royal ladies and many other fine people
rode toward the coast.

Alianora went magnificently this morning, on a white horse, and
wearing a kirtle of changeable green like the sea's green in
sunlight: her golden hair was bound with a gold frontlet wherein
were emeralds. Freydis, dark and stately, was in crimson
embroidered with small gold stars and ink-horns: a hooded falcon
sat on her gloved wrist.

Now Freydis and Alianora stared at the swarthy, flat-faced,
limping peasant girl in brown drugget that was with Count Manuel.
Then Alianora stared at Freydis.

"Is it for this dingy cripple," says Alianora, with her proud
fine face all wonder, "that Dom Manuel has forsaken us and has put
off his youth? Why, the girl is out and out ugly!"

"Our case is none the better for that," replied Freydis, the
wise Queen, whose gazing rested not upon Niafer but on Manuel.

"Who are those disreputable looking, bold-faced creatures that
are making eyes at you?" says Niafer.

And Manuel, marveling to meet these two sorceresses together,
replied, as he civilly saluted them from a little distance, "Two
royal ladies, who would be well enough were it not for their
fondness for having their own way."

"And I suppose you think them handsome!"

"Yes, Niafer, I find them very beautiful. But after looking at
them with aesthetic pleasure, my gaze returns adoringly to the face
I have created as I willed, and to the quiet love of my youth, and
I have no occasion to be thinking of queens and princesses.
Instead, I give thanks in my heart that I am faring contentedly
toward the nearest priest with the one woman in the world who to my
finding is desirable and lovely."

"It is very sweet of you to say that, Manuel, and I am sure I
hope you are telling the truth, but my faith would be greater if
you had not rattled it off so glibly."

Then Alianora said: "Greetings, and for the while farewell, to
you, Count Manuel! For all we ride to Quentavic, and thence I am
passing over into England to marry the King of that island."

"Now, but there is a lucky monarch for you!" says Manuel,
politely. He looked at Freydis, who had put off immortality for his
kisses, and whom he had deserted to follow after his own thinking:
these re-encounters are always awkward, and Dom Manuel fidgeted a
little. He asked her, "And do you also go into England?"

She told him very quietly, no, that she was only going to the
coast, to consult with three or four of the water-demons about
enchanting one of the Red Islands, and about making her home there.
She had virtually decided, she told him, to put a spell upon
Sargyll, as it seemed the most desirable of these islands from what
she could hear, but she must first see the place. Queen Freydis
looked at him with rather embarrassing intentness all the while,
but she spoke quite calmly.

"Yes, yes," Dom Manuel said, cordially, "I dare say you will be
very comfortable there, and I am sure I hope so. But I did not know
that you two ladies were acquainted."

"Indeed, our affairs are not your affairs," says Freydis, "any
longer. And what does it matter, on this November day which has a
thin sunlight and no heat at all in it? No, that girl yonder has
to-day. But Alianora and I had each her yesterday; and it may be
the one or it may be the other of us three who will have to-morrow,
and it may be also that the disposal of that to-morrow will be
remarkable."

"Very certainly," declared Alianora, with that slow, lovely,
tranquil smile of hers, "I shall have my portion of to-morrow. I
would have made you a king, and by and by the most powerful of all
kings, but you followed after your own thinking, and cared more for
messing in wet mud than for a throne. Still, this nonsense of yours
has converted you into a rather distinguished looking old
gentleman, so when I need you I shall summon you, with the token
that we know of, Dom Manuel, and then do you come post-haste!"

Freydis said: "I would have made you the greatest of
image-makers; but you followed after your own thinking, and instead
of creating new and god-like beings you preferred to resurrect a
dead servant girl. Nevertheless, do I bid you beware of the one
living image you made, for it still lives and it alone you cannot
ever shut out from your barred heart, Dom Manuel: and nevertheless,
do I bid you come to me, Dom Manuel, when you need me."

Manuel replied, "I shall always obey both of you." Niafer
throughout this while said nothing at all. But she had her private
thoughts, to the effect that neither of these high-and-mighty
trollops was in reality the person whom henceforward Dom Manuel was
going to obey.

So the horns sounded. The gay cavalcade rode on, toward
Quentavic. And as they went young Osmund Heleigh (Lord Brudenel's
son) asked for the gallant King of Navarre, "But who, sire, was
that time-battered gray vagabond, with the tarnished silver
stallion upon his shield and the mud-colored cripple at his side,
that our Queens should be stopping for any conference with
him?"

King Thibaut said it was the famous Dom Manuel of Poictesme, who
had put away his youth for the sake of the girl that was with
him.

"Then is the old man a fool on every count," declared Messire
Heleigh, sighing, "for I have heard of his earlier antics in
Provence, and no lovelier lady breathes than Dame Alianora."

"I consider Queen Freydis to be the handsomer of the two,"
replied Thibaut, "but certainly there is no comparing either of
these inestimable ladies with Dom Manuel's swarthy drab."

"She is perhaps some witch whose magic is more terrible than
their magic, and has besotted this ruined champion?"

"It is either enchantment or idiocy, unless indeed it be
something far higher than either." King Thibaut looked grave, then
shrugged. "Oy Dieus! even so, Queen Freydis is the more to my
taste."

Thus speaking, the young King spurred his bay horse toward Queen
Freydis (from whom he got his ruin a little later), and all
Alianora's retinue went westward, very royally, while Manuel and
Niafer trudged east. Much color and much laughter went one way, but
the other way went contentment, for that while.

PART FOUR

THE BOOK OF SURCHARGE

TO

HUGH WALPOLE

Soe Manuel made all the Goddes that we call mamettes
and ydolles, that were sett ouer the Subiection of his
lyfe tyme: and euery of the goddes that Manuel wolde carue
toilesomelie hadde in hys Bodie a Blemmishe; and in the mydle of
the godes made he one god of the Philistines.

XXV

Affairs in Poictesme

They of Poictesme narrate how Manuel and Niafer traveled east a
little way and then turned toward the warm South; and how they
found a priest to marry them, and how Manuel confiscated two
horses. They tell also how Manuel victoriously encountered a rather
terrible dragon at La Flèche, and near Orthez had trouble
with a Groach, whom he conquered and imprisoned in a leather
bottle, but they say that otherwise the journey was uneventful.

"And now that every obligation is lifted, and we are reunited,
my dear Niafer," says Manuel, as they sat resting after his fight
with the dragon, "we will, I repeat, be traveling every whither, so
that we may see the ends of this world and may judge them."

"Dearest," replied Niafer, "I have been thinking about that, and
I am sure it would be delightful, if only people were not so
perfectly horrid."

"What do you mean, dear snip?"

"You see, Manuel, now that you have fetched me back from
paradise, people will be saying you ought to give me, in exchange
for the abodes of bliss from which I have been summoned, at least a
fairly comfortable and permanent terrestrial residence. Yes,
dearest, you know what people are, and the evil-minded will be only
too delighted to be saying everywhere that you are neglecting an
obvious duty if you go wandering off to see and judge the ends of
this world, with which, after all, you have really no especial
concern."

"Oh, well, and if they do?" says Manuel, shrugging lordily.
"There is no hurt in talking."

"Yes, Manuel, but such shiftless wandering, into uncomfortable
places that nobody ever heard of, would have that appearance. Now
there is nothing I would more thoroughly enjoy then to go traveling
about at adventure with you, and to be a countess means nothing
whatever to me. I am sure I do not in the least care to live in a
palace of my own, and be bothered with fine clothes and the
responsibility of looking after my rubies, and with servants and
parties every day. But you see, darling, I simply could not bear to
have people thinking ill of my dear husband, and so, rather than
have that happen, I am willing to put up with these things."

"Oh, oh!" says Manuel, and he began pulling vexedly at his
little gray beard, "and does one obligation beget another as fast
as this! Now whatever would you have me do?"

"Obviously, you must get troops from King Ferdinand, and drive
that awful Asmund out of Poictesme."

"Dear me!" says Manuel, "but what a simple matter you make of
it! Shall I attend to it this afternoon?"

"Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not
possibly re-conquer all Poictesme this afternoon—."

"Oh!" says Manuel.

"No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get
troops to help you, both horse and foot."

"My dearest, I only meant—"

"—Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill
off all the Northmen."

"Niafer, will you let me explain—"

"—Besides, you are miles away from Poictesme. You could
not even manage to get there this afternoon."

Manuel put his hand over her mouth. "Niafer, when I spoke of
subjugating Poictesme this afternoon I was attempting a mild joke.
I will never any more attempt light irony in your presence, for I
perceive that you do not appreciate my humor. Meanwhile I repeat to
you, No, no, a thousand times, no! To be called Count of Poictesme
sounds well, it strokes the hearing: but I will not be set to root
and vegetate in a few hundred spadefuls of dirt. No, for I have but
one lifetime here, and in that lifetime I mean to see this world
and all the ends of this world, that I may judge them. And I," he
concluded, decisively, "am Manuel, who follow after my own thinking
and my own desire."

Niafer began to weep. "I simply cannot bear to think of what
people will say of you."

"Come, come, my dear," says Manuel, "this is preposterous."

Niafer wept.

"You will only end by making yourself ill!" says Manuel.

Niafer continued to weep.

"My mind is quite made up," says Manuel, "so what, in God's
name, is the good of this?"

Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big
champion sat looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He
viciously kicked at the heavy glistening green head of the dragon,
still bleeding uglily there at his feet, but that did no good
whatever. The dragon-queller was beaten. He could do nothing
against such moisture, his resolution was dampened and his
independence was washed away by this salt flood. And they say too
that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of
quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he
acknowledged.

"Very well, then," Manuel says, by and by, "let us cross the
Loir, and ride south to look for our infernal coronet with the
rubies in it, and for your servants, and for some of your
palaces."

So in the Christmas holidays they bring a tall burly squinting
gray-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the
royal palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo
and his goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on
Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The King was delighted by the change in Manuel's looks, and said
that experience and maturity were fine things to be suggested by
the appearance of a nobleman in Manuel's position. But, a pest! as
for giving him any troops with which to conquer Poictesme, that was
quite another matter. The King needed his own soldiers for his own
ends, which necessitated the immediate capture of Cordova.
Meanwhile here were the Prince de Gâtinais and the Marquess
di Paz, who also had come with this insane request, the one for
soldiers to help him against the Philistines, and the other against
the Catalans.

"Everybody to whom I ever granted a fief seems to need troops
nowadays," the King grumbled, "and if any one of you had any
judgment whatever you would have retained your lands once they were
given you."

"Our deficiencies, sire," says the young Prince de
Gâtinais, with considerable spirit, "have not been altogether
in judgment, but rather in the support afforded us by our
liege-lord."

This was perfectly true; but inasmuch as such blunt truths are
not usually flung at a king and a saint, now Ferdinand's thin brows
went up.

"Do you think so?" said the King. "We must see about it. What is
that, for example?"

He pointed to the pool by which the lemon-trees were watered,
and the Prince glanced at the yellow object afloat in this pool.
"Sire," said de Gâtinais, "it is a lemon which has fallen
from one of the trees."

"So you judge it to be a lemon. And what do you make of it, di
Paz?" the King inquired.

The Marquess was a statesman who took few chances. He walked to
the edge of the pool, and looked at the thing before committing
himself: and he came back smiling. "Ah, sire, you have indeed
contrived a cunning sermon against hasty judgment, for, while the
tree is a lemon-tree, the thing that floats beneath it is an
orange."

"So you, Marquess, judge it to be an orange. And what do you
make of it, Count of Poictesme?" the King asks now.

If di Paz took few chances, Manuel took none at all. He waded
into the pool, and fetched out the thing which floated there.
"King," says big Dom Manuel, sagely blinking his bright pale eyes,
"it is the half of an orange."

Said the King: "Here is a man who is not lightly deceived by the
vain shows of this world, and who values truth more than dry shoes.
Count Manuel, you shall have your troops, and you others must wait
until you have acquired Count Manuel's powers of judgment, which,
let me tell you, are more valuable than any fief I have to
give."

So when the spring had opened, Manuel went into Poictesme at the
head of a very creditable army, and Dom Manuel summoned Duke Asmund
to surrender all that country. Asmund, who was habitually peevish
under the puckerel curse, refused with opprobrious epithets, and
the fighting began.

Manuel had, of course, no knowledge of generalship, but King
Ferdinand sent the Conde de Tohil Vaca as Manuel's lieutenant.
Manuel now figured imposingly in jeweled armor, and the sight of
his shield bearing the rampant stallion and the motto Mundus
vult decipi became in battle a signal for the more prudent
among his adversaries to distinguish themselves in some other part
of the conflict. It was whispered by backbiters that in counsel and
in public discourse Dom Manuel sonorously repeated the orders and
opinions provided by Tohil Vaca: either way, the official
utterances of the Count of Poictesme roused everywhere the kindly
feeling which one reserves for old friends, so that no harm was
done.

To the contrary, Dom Manuel now developed an invaluable gift for
public speaking, and in every place which he conquered and occupied
he made powerful addresses to the surviving inhabitants before he
had them hanged, exhorting all right-thinking persons to crush the
military autocracy of Asmund. Besides, as Manuel pointed out, this
was a struggle such as the world had never known, in that it was a
war to end war forever, and to ensure eternal peace for everybody's
children. Never, as he put it forcefully, had men fought for a more
glorious cause. And so on and go on, said he, and these uplifting
thoughts had a fine effect upon everyone.

"How wonderfully you speak!" Dame Niafer would say
admiringly.

And Manuel would look at her queerly, and reply: "I am earning
your home, my dear, and your servants' wages, and some day these
verbal jewels will be perpetuated in a real coronet. For I perceive
that a former acquaintance of mine was right in pointing out the
difference between men and the other animals."

"Ah, yes, indeed!" said Niafer, very gravely, and not attaching
any particular meaning to it, but generally gathering that she and
Manuel were talking about something edifying and pious. For Niafer
was now a devout Christian, as became a Countess of Poictesme, and
nobody anywhere entertained a more sincere reverence for solemn
noises.

"For instance," Dame Niafer continued, "they tell me that these
lovely speeches of yours have produced such an effect upon the
Philistines yonder that their Queen Stultitia has proffered an
alliance, and has promised to send you light cavalry and
battering-rams."

"It is true she has promised to send them, but she has not done
so."

"None the less, Manuel, you will find that the moral effect of
her approbation will be invaluable; and, as I so often think, that
is the main thing after all—"

"Yes, yes," says Manuel, impatiently, "we have plenty of moral
approbation and fine speaking here, and in the South we have a
saint to work miracles for us, but it is Asmund who has that army
of splendid reprobates, and they do not value morality and rhetoric
the worth of an old finger-nail."

So the fighting continued throughout that spring, and in
Poictesme it all seemed very important and unexampled, just as wars
usually appear to the people that are engaged in them. Thousands of
men were slain, to the regret of their mothers and sweethearts, and
very often of their wives. And there was the ordinary amount of
unparalleled military atrocities and perfidies and ravishments and
burnings and so on, and the endurers took their agonies so
seriously that it is droll to think of how unimportant it all was
in the outcome.

For this especial carnage was of supreme and world-wide
significance so long ago that it is now not worth the pains
involved to rephrase for inattentive hearing the combat of the
knights at Perdigon—out of which came alive only Guivric and
Coth and Anavalt and Gonfal,—or to speak of the once famous
battle of the tinkers, or to retell how the inflexible syndics of
Montors were imprisoned in a cage and slain by mistake. It no
longer really matters to any living person how the Northmen burned
the bridge of boats at Manneville; nor how Asmund trod upon a
burned-through beam at the disastrous siege of Évre, and so
fell thirty feet into the midst of his enemies and broke his leg,
but dealt so valorously that he got safe away; nor how at Lisuarte
unarmored peasants beat off Manuel's followers with scythes and
pitchforks and clubs.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as
the color is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act
wisely when they wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the
brave Siennese and their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings
of the Anti-Pope there, and grudge the paper needful to record the
remarkable method by which gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre
on every chimney in Poictesme.

It is not even possible, nowadays, to put warm interest in those
once notable pots of blazing sulphur and fat and quicklime that
were emptied over the walls of Storisende, to the discomfort of
Manuel's men. For although this was a very heroic war, with a
parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most
sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to
bring about either the reformation or the ruin, of humankind: and
after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the
world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with
a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably
invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say
so.

Therefore it suffices to report that there was much killing and
misery everywhere, and that in June, upon Corpus Christi day, the
Conde de Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible
jocosity which used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel's forces
were defeated and scattered.

XXVI

Deals with the Stork

Now Manuel, driven out of Poictesme, went with his wife to
Novogath, which had been for some seven years the capital of
Philistia. Queen Stultitia, the sixtieth of that name to rule,
received them friendlily. She talked alone with Manuel for a
lengthy while, in a room that was walled with glazed tiles of
faience and had its ceiling incrusted with moral axioms, everywhere
affixed thereto in a light lettering of tin, so as to permit of
these axioms being readily changed. Stultitia sat at a bronze
reading-desk: she wore rose-colored spectacles, and at her feet
dozed, for the while, her favorite plaything, a blind, small, very
fat white bitch called Luck.

The Queen still thought that an alliance could be arranged
against Duke Asmund as soon as public sentiment could be fomented
in Philistia, but this would take time. "Have patience, my friend!"
she said, and that was easy saying for a prosperous great lady
sitting comfortably crowned and spectacled in her own palace, under
her own chimneys and skylights and campaniles and domes and towers
and battlements.

But in the mean while Manuel and Niafer had not so much as a
cowshed wherein to exercise this recommended virtue. So Manuel made
inquiries, and learned that Queen Freydis had taken up her abode on
Sargyll, most remote of the Red Islands.

"We will go to Freydis," he told Niafer.

"But, surely, not after the way that minx probably believes you
treated her?" said Niafer.

Manuel smiled the sleepy smile that was Manuel. "I know Freydis
better than you know her, my dear."

"Yes, but can you depend upon her?"

"I can depend upon myself, and that is more important."

"But, Manuel, you have another dear friend in England; and in
England, although the Lord knows I never want to lay eyes on her,
we might at least be comfortable—"

Manuel shook his head: "I am very fond of Alianora, because she
resembles me as closely as it is possible for a woman to resemble a
man. That makes two excellent reasons—one for each of us,
snip,—why we had better not go into England."

So, in their homeless condition, they resolved to set out for
Sargyll,—"to visit that other dear friend of yours," as
Niafer put it, in tones more eloquent than Manuel seemed quite to
relish.

Dame Niafer, though, now began to complain that Manuel was
neglecting her for all this statecraft and fighting and
speech-making and private conference with fine ladies; and she
began to talk again about what a pity it was that she and Manuel
would probably never have any children to be company for Niafer.
Niafer complained rather often nowadays, about details which are
here irrelevant: and she was used to lament with every appearance
of sincerity that, in making the clay figure for Niafer to live in,
Manuel should have been so largely guided by the elsewhere
estimable qualities of innocence and imagination. It frequently put
her, she said, to great inconvenience.

Now Manuel had been inquiring about this and that and the other
since his arrival in Novogath, and so Manuel to-day replied with
lordly assurance. "Yes, yes, a baby or two!" says Manuel. "I think
myself that would be an excellent idea, while we are waiting for
Queen Stultitia to make up her subjects' minds, and have nothing
else in particular to do—"

"But, Manuel, you know perfectly well—"

"—And I am sufficiently versed in the magic of the
Apsarasas to be able to summon the stork, who by rare good luck is
already indebted to me—"

"What has the stork to do with this?"

"Why, it is he who must bring the babies to be company for
you."

"But, Manuel," said Niafer, dubiously, "I do not believe that
the people of Rathgor, or of Poictesme either, get their babies
from the stork."

"Doubtless, like every country, they have their quaint local
customs. We have no concern, however with these provincialities
just now, for we are in Philistia. Besides, as you cannot well have
forgotten, our main dependence is upon the half-promised alliance
with Queen Stultitia, who is, as far as I can foresee, my darling,
the only monarch anywhere likely to support us."

"But what has Queen Stultitia to do with my having a baby?"

"Everything, dear snip. You must surely understand it is most
important for one in my position to avoid in any way offending the
sensibilities of the Philistines."

"Still, Manuel, the Philistines themselves have babies, and I do
not see how they could have conceivably objected to my having at
any rate a very small one if only you had made me right—"

"Not at all! nobody objects to the baby in itself, now that you
are a married woman. The point is that the babies of the
Philistines are brought to them by the stork; and that even an
allusion to the possibility of misguided persons obtaining a baby
in any other way these Philistines consider to be offensive and
lewd and lascivious and obscene."

"Why, how droll of them! But are you sure of that, Manuel!"

"All their best-thought-of and most popular writers, my dear,
are unanimous upon the point; and their Seranim have passed any
number of laws, their oil-merchants have founded a guild,
especially to prosecute such references. No, there is, to be sure,
a dwindling sect which favors putting up with what babies you may
find in the cabbage patch, but all really self-respecting people
when in need of offspring arrange to be visited by the stork."

"It is certainly a remarkable custom, but it sounds convenient
if you can manage it," said Niafer. "What I want is the baby,
though, and of course we must try to get the baby in the manner of
the Philistines, if you know that manner, for I am sure I have no
wish to offend anybody."

So Manuel prepared to get a baby in the manner preferred by the
Philistines. He performed the suitable incantation, putting this
and that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian
witches and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if
indecent charm from the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had
told him to say, without any mock-modest mincing of words:

Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk
and five curious objects something like small black stars. With the
chalk he drew upon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel
walked on one of these chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned
Niafer to him. Standing there, he put his arms about her and kissed
her. Then he placed the five black stars in a row,—

*  *  *  *  *

—and went over to the next line.

The stork having been thus properly summoned, Manuel recalled to
the bird the three wishes which had been promised when Manuel saved
the stork's life: and Manuel said that for each wish he would take
a son fetched to him by the stork in the manner of the
Philistines.

The stork thought it could be arranged. "Not this morning,
though, as you suggest, for, indebted as I am to you, Dom Manuel, I
am also a very busy bird. No, I have any number of orders that were
put in months before yours, and I must follow system in my
business, for you have no notion what elaborate and exact accounts
are frequently required by the married men that receive invoices
from me."

"Come now," says Manuel, "do you be accommodating, remembering
how I once saved your life from the eagle, and my wife and I will
order all our babies now, and spare you the trouble of keeping any
accounts whatever, so far as we are concerned."

"Oh, if you care to deal with such wholesale irregularity, and
have no more consideration than to keep casting old debts in my
bill, I might stretch a point in order to be rid of you," the stork
said, sighing.

"Now, but surely," Manuel considered, "you might be a little
more cheerful about this matter."

"And why should I, of all the birds that go about the heavens,
be cheerful?"

"Well, somehow one expects a reasonable gaiety in you who bring
hilarity and teething-rings into so many households—"

The stork answered:

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and
therewith I, they say, bring joy. Now of the joy I bring to the
mother let none speak, for miracles are not neatly to be caged in
sentences, nor is truth always expedient. To the father I bring the
sight of his own life, by him so insecurely held, renewed and
strengthened in a tenement not yet impaired by time and folly: he
is no more disposed to belittle himself here than elsewhere; and it
is himself that he cuddles in this small, soft, incomprehensible
and unsoiled incarnation. For, as I bring the children, they have
no evil in them and no cowardice and no guile.

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, when
later I return, to those that yesterday were children. And in all
ways time has marred, and living has defaced, and prudence has
maimed, until I grieve to entrust that which I bring to what
remains of that which yesterday I brought. In the old days children
were sacrificed to a brazen burning god, but time affects more
subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright. Yes, Moloch, being
divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but time is that
transfigured cat, an ironist. So living mars and defaces and maims,
and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its prey before
destroying it.

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and I
leave them to endure that which is fated. Daily I bring into this
world the beauty and innocence and high-heartedness and faith of
children: but life has no employment, or else life has no
sustenance, for these fine things which I bring daily, for always
I, returning, find the human usages of living have extinguished
these excellences in those who yesterday were children, and that
these virtues exist in no aged person. And I would that Jahveh had
created me an eagle or a vulture or some other hateful bird of prey
that furthers a less grievous slaying and a more intelligible
wasting than I further."

To this, Dom Manuel replied, in that grave and matter-of-fact
way of his: "Now certainly I can see how your vocation may seem, in
a manner of speaking, a poor investment; but, after all, your
business is none of my business, so I shall not presume to
criticize it. Instead, let us avoid these lofty generalities, and
to you tell me when I may look for those three sons of mine."

Then they talked over this matter of getting babies, Manuel
walking on the chalk line all the while, and Manuel found he could
have, if he preferred it so, three girls in place of one of the
boys, since the demand for sons was thrice that for daughters. To
Niafer it was at once apparent that to obtain five babies in place
of three was a clear bargain. Manuel said he did not want any
daughters, they were too much of a responsibility, and he did not
intend to be bothered with them. He was very firm and lordly about
it. Then Niafer spoke again, and when she had ended, Manuel wished
for two boys and three girls. Thereafter the stork subscribed five
promissory notes, and they executed all the other requisite
formalities.

The stork said that by a little management he could let them
have one of the children within a day or so. "But how long have you
two been married?" he asked.

"Oh, ever so long," said Manuel, with a faint sigh.

"Why, no, my dearest," said Niafer, "we have been married only
seven months."

"In that event," declared the stork, "you had better wait until
month after next, for it is not the fashion among my patrons to
have me visiting them quite so early."

"Well," said Manuel, "we wish to do everything in conformance to
the preferences of Philistia, even to the extent of following such
incomprehensible fashions." So he arranged to have the promised
baby delivered at Sargyll, which, he told the stork, would be their
address for the remainder of the summer.

XXVII

They Come to Sargyll

Then Manuel and Niafer put out to sea, and after two days'
voyaging they came to Sargyll and to the hospitality of Queen
Freydis. Freydis was much talked about at that time on account of
the way in which King Thibaut had come to his ruin through her, and
on account of her equally fatal dealings with the Duke of Istria
and the Prince of Camwy and three or four other lords. So the
ship-captains whom Dom Manuel first approached preferred not to
venture among the Red Islands. Then the Jewish master of a trading
vessel—a lean man called Ahasuerus—said, "Who forbids
it?" and carried them uneventfully from Novogath to Sargyll. They
narrate how Oriander the Swimmer followed after the yellow ship,
but he attempted no hurt against Manuel, at least not for that
turn.

Thus Manuel came again to Freydis. He had his first private talk
with her in a room that was hung with black and gold brocade. White
mats lay upon the ground, and placed irregularly about the room
were large brass vases filled with lotus blossoms. Here Freydis sat
on a three-legged stool, in conference with a panther. From the
ceiling hung rigid blue and orange and reddish-brown serpents, all
dead and embalmed; and in the middle of the ceiling was painted a
face which was not quite human, looking downward, with evil eyes
half closed, and with its mouth half open in discomfortable
laughter.

Freydis was clad in scarlet completely, and, as has been said, a
golden panther was talking to her when Dom Manuel came in. She at
once dismissed the beast, which smiled amicably at Dom Manuel, and
then arched high its back in the manner of all the cat tribe, and
so flattened out into a thin transparent goldness, and, flickering,
vanished upward as a flame leaves a lampwick.

"Well, well, you bade me come to you, dear friend, when I had
need of you," says Manuel, very cordially shaking hands, "and
nobody's need could be more great than mine."

"Different people have different needs," Freydis replied, rather
gravely, "but all passes in this world."

"Friendship, however, does not pass, I hope."

She answered slowly: "It is we who pass, so that the young
Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, is nowadays as
perished as that summer's gay leaves. What, grizzled fighting-man,
have you to do with that young Manuel who had comeliness and youth
and courage, but no human pity and no constant love? and why should
I be harboring his lighthearted mischiefs against you? Ah, no, gray
Manuel, you are quite certain no woman would do that; and people
say you are shrewd. So I bid you very welcome to Sargyll, where my
will is the only law."

"You at least have not changed," Dom Manuel replied, with utter
truth, "for you appear today, if anything, more fair and young than
you were that first night upon Morven when I evoked you from tall
flames to lend life to the image I had made. Well, that seems now a
lengthy while ago, and I make no more images."

"Your wife would be considering it a waste of time," Queen
Freydis estimated.

"No, that is not quite the way it is. For Niafer is the dearest
and most dutiful of women, and she never crosses my wishes in
anything."

Freydis now smiled a little, for she saw that Manuel believed he
was speaking veraciously. "At all events," said Freydis, "it is a
queer thing surely that in the month which is to come the stork
will be fetching your second child to a woman resting under my roof
and in my golden bed. Yes, Thurinel has just been telling me of
your plan, and it is a queer thing. Yet it is a far queerer thing
that your first child, whom no stork fetched nor had any say in
shaping, but whom you made of clay to the will of your proud youth
and in your proud youth's likeness, should be limping about the
world somewhere in the appearance of a strapping tall young fellow,
and that you should know nothing about his doings."

"Ah! what have you heard? and what do you know about him,
Freydis?"

"I suspicion many things, gray Manuel, by virtue of my dabblings
in that gray art which makes neither for good nor evil."

"Yes," said Manuel, practically, "but what do you know?"

She took his hand again. "I know that in Sargyll, where my will
is the only law, you are welcome, false friend and very faithless
lover."

He could get no more out of her, as they stood there under the
painted face which looked down upon them with discomfortable
laughter.

So Manuel and Niafer remained at Sargyll until the baby should
be delivered. King Ferdinand, then in the midst of another campaign
against the Moors, could do nothing for his vassal just now. But
glittering messengers came from Raymond Bérenger, and from
King Helmas, and from Queen Stultitia, each to discuss this and
that possible alliance and aid by and by. Everybody was very
friendly if rather vague. But Manuel for the present considered
only Niafer and the baby that was to come, and he let statecraft
bide.

Then two other ships, that were laden with Duke Asmund's men,
came also, in an attempt to capture Manuel: so Freydis despatched a
sending which caused these soldiers to run about the decks howling
like wolves, and to fling away their swords and winged helmets, and
to fight one against the other with hands and teeth until all were
slain.

The month passed thus uneventfully. And Niafer and Freydis
became the best and most intimate of friends, and their cordiality
to each other could not but have appeared to the discerning rather
ominous.

"She seems to be a very good-hearted sort of a person," Niafer
conceded, in matrimonial privacy, "though certainly she is rather
queer. Why, Manuel, she showed me this afternoon ten of the
drollest figures to which—but, no, you would never guess it
in the world,—to which she is going to give life some day,
just as you did to me when you got my looks and legs and pretty
much everything else all wrong."

"When does she mean to quicken them?" Dom Manuel asked: and he
added, "Not that I did, dear snip, but I shall not argue about
it."

"Why, that is the droll part of it, and I can quite understand
your unwillingness to admit how little you had remembered about me.
When the man who made them has been properly rewarded, she said,
with, Manuel, the most appalling expression you ever saw."

"What were these images like?" asked Dom Manuel.

Niafer described them: she described them unsympathetically, but
there was no doubt they were the images which Manuel had left
unquickened upon Upper Morven.

Manuel nodded, smiled, and said: "So the man who made these
images is to be properly rewarded! Well, that is encouraging, for
true merit should always be rewarded."

"But, Manuel, if you had seen her look! and seen what horrible
misshapen creatures they were—!"

"Nonsense!" said Manuel, stoutly: "you are a dear snip, but that
does not make you a competent critic of either physiognomy or
sculpture."

So he laughed the matter aside; and this, as it happened, was
the last that Dom Manuel heard of the ten images which he had made
upon Upper Morven. But they of Poictesme declared that Queen
Freydis did give life to these figures, each at a certain hour, and
that her wizardry set them to live as men among mankind, with no
very happy results, because these images differed from naturally
begotten persons by having inside them a spark of the life of
Audela.

Thus Manuel and his wife came uneventfully to August; all the
while there was never a more decorous or more thoughtful hostess
than Queen Freydis; and nobody would have suspected that sorcery
underlay the running of her household. It was only through Dom
Manuel's happening to arise very early one morning, at the call of
nature, that he chanced to be passing through the hall when, at the
moment of sunrise, the night-porter turned into an orange-colored
rat, and crept into the wainscoting: and Manuel of course said
nothing about this to anybody, because it was none of his
affair.

XXVIII

How Melicent Was Welcomed

So the month passed prosperously and uneventfully, while the
servitors of Queen Freydis behaved in every respect as if they were
human beings: and at the end of the month the stork came.

Manuel and Niafer, it happened, were fishing on the river bank
rather late that evening, when they saw the great bird approaching,
high overhead, all glistening white in the sunset, except for his
thin scarlet legs and the blue shadowings in the hollows of his
wings. From his beak depended a largish bundle, in pale blue
wrappings, so that at a glance they knew the stork was bringing a
girl.

Statelily the bird lighted on the window sill, as though he were
quite familiar with this way of entering Manuel's bedroom, and the
bird went in, carrying the child. This was a high and happy moment
for the fond parents as they watched him, and they kissed each
other rather solemnly.

Then Niafer left Manuel to get together the fishing tackle, and
she hastened into the house to return to the stork the first of his
promissory notes in exchange for the baby. And as Manuel was
winding up the lines, Queen Freydis came to him, for she too had
seen the stork's approach; and was, she said, with a grave smile,
well pleased that the affair was settled.

"For now the stork has come, yet others may come," says Freydis,
"and we shall celebrate the happy event with a gay feast this night
in honor of your child."

"That is very kind and characteristic of you," said Manuel, "but
I suppose you will be wanting me to make a speech, and I am quite
unprepared."

"No, we will have none of your high-minded and devastating
speeches at our banquet. No, for your place is with your wife. No,
Manuel, you are not bidden to this feast, for all that it is to do
honor to your child. No, no, gray Manuel, you must remain upstairs
this evening and throughout the night, because this feast is for
them that serve me: and you do not serve me any longer, and the
ways of them that serve me are not your ways."

"Ah!" says Manuel, "so there is sorcery afoot! Yes, Freydis, I
have quite given over that sort of thing. And while not for a
moment would I seem to be criticizing anybody, I hope before long
to see you settling down, with some fine solid fellow, and
forsaking these empty frivolities for the higher and real pleasures
of life."

"And what are these delights, gray Manuel?"

"The joy that is in the sight of your children playing happily
about your hearth, and developing into honorable men and gracious
women, and bringing their children in turn to cluster about your
tired old knees, as the winter evenings draw in, and in the cosy
fire-light you smile across the curly heads of these children's
children at the dear wrinkled white-haired face of your beloved and
time-tested helpmate, and are satisfied, all in all, with your
life, and know that, by and large, Heaven has been rather
undeservedly kind to you," says Manuel, sighing. "Yes, Freydis,
yes, you may believe me that such are the real joys of life; and
that such pleasures are more profitably pursued than are the idle
gaieties of sorcery and witchcraft, which indeed at our age, if you
will permit me to speak thus frankly, dear friend, are hardly
dignified."

Freydis shook her proud dark head. Her smiling was grim.

"Decidedly, I shall not ever understand you. Doddering
patriarch, do you not comprehend you are already discoursing about
a score or two of grandchildren on the ground of having a
five-minute-old daughter, whom you have not yet seen? Nor is that
child's future, it may be, yours to settle—But go to your
wife, for this is Niafer's man who is talking, and not mine. Go up,
Methuselah, and behold the new life which you have created and
cannot control!"

Manuel went to Niafer, and found her sewing. "My dear, this will
not do at all, for you ought to be in bed with the newborn child,
as is the custom with the mothers of Philistia."

"What nonsense!" says Niafer, "when I have to be changing every
one of the pink bows on Melicent's caps for blue bows."

"Still, Niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating
the Philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your
having a baby."

Niafer grumbled, but obeyed. She presently lay in the golden bed
of Freydis: then Manuel duly looked at the contents of the small
heaving bundle at Niafer's side: and whether or no he scaled the
conventional peaks of emotion was nobody's concern save Manuel's.
He began, in any event, to talk in the vein which fathers
ordinarily feel such high occasions to demand. But Niafer, who was
never romantic nowadays, merely said that, anyhow, it was a
blessing it was all over, and that she hoped, now, they would soon
be leaving Sargyll.

"But Freydis is so kind, my dear," said Manuel, "and so fond of
you!"

"I never in my life," declared Niafer, "knew anybody to go off
so terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the
first time I saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her
snake eyes at you. As for being fond of me, I trust her exactly as
far as I can see her."

"Yet, Niafer, I have heard you declare, time and
again—"

"But if you did, Manuel, one has to be civil."

Manuel shrugged, discreetly. "You women!" he observed,
discreetly.

"—As if it were not as plain as the nose on her
face—and I do not suppose that even you, Manuel, will be
contending she has a really good nose,—that the woman is
simply itching to make a fool of you, and to have everybody
laughing at you, again! Manuel, I declare I have no patience with
you when you keep arguing about such unarguable facts!"

Manuel, exercising augmented discretion, now said nothing
whatever.

"—And you may talk yourself black in the face, Manuel, but
nevertheless I am going to name the child Melicent, after my own
mother, as soon as a priest can be fetched from the mainland to
christen her. No, Manuel, it is all very well for your dear friend
to call herself a gray witch, but I do not notice any priests
coming to this house unless they are especially sent for, and I
draw my own conclusions."

"Well, well, let us not argue about it, my dear."

"Yes, but who started all this arguing and fault-finding, I
would like to know!"

"Why, to be sure I did. But I spoke without thinking. I was
wrong. I admit it. So do not excite yourself, dear snip."

"—And as if I could help the child's not being a boy!"

"But I never said—"

"No, but you keep thinking it, and sulking is the one thing I
cannot stand. No, Manuel, no, I do not complain, but I do think
that, after all I have been through with, sleeping around in tents,
and running away from Northmen, and never having a moment's
comfort, after I had naturally figured on being a real
countess—" Niafer whimpered sleepily.

"Yes, yes," says Manuel, stroking her soft crinkly hair.

"—And with that silky hell-cat watching me all the
time,—and looking ten years younger than I do, now that you
have got my face and legs all wrong,—and planning I do not
know what—"

"Yes, to be sure," says Manuel, soothingly: "you are quite
right, my dear."

So a silence fell, and presently Niafer slept. Manuel sat with
hunched shoulders, watching the wife he had fetched back from
paradise at the price of his youth. His face was grave, his lips
were puckered and protruded. He smiled by and by, and he shook his
head. He sighed, not as one who is grieved, but like a man
perplexed and a little weary.

Now some while after Niafer was asleep, and when the night was
fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the
air. Manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain
figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a
vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and
agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas. These approached the
river bank, and gathered there. Then the assembled lights began to
come toward the house. You could now see these lights were carried
by dwarfs who had the eyes of owls and the long beaks of storks.
These dwarfs were jumping and dancing about Freydis like an insane
body-guard.

Freydis walked among them very remarkably attired. Upon her head
shone the uraeus crown, and she carried a long rod of cedar-wood
topped with an apple carved in bluestone, and at her side came the
appearance of a tall young man.

So they all approached the house, and the young man looked up
fixedly at the unlighted window, as though he were looking at
Manuel. The young man smiled: his teeth gleamed in the blue glare.
Then the whole company entered the house, and from Manuel's station
at the window you could see no more, but you could hear small
prancing hoof-beats downstairs and the clattering of plates and
much whinnying laughter. Manuel was plucking irresolutely at his
grizzled short beard, for there was no doubt as to the strapping
tall young fellow.

Presently you could hear music: it was the ravishing Nis air,
which charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and Manuel
did not make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. He
hastily undressed, knelt for a decorous interval, and climbed
vexedly into bed.

XXIX

Sesphra of the Dreams

In the morning Dom Manuel arose early, and left Niafer still
sleeping with the baby. Manuel came down through the lower hall,
where the table was as the revelers had left it. In the middle of
the disordered room stood a huge copper vessel half full of liquor,
and beside it was a drinking-horn of gold. Manuel paused here, and
drank of the sweet heather-wine as though he had need to hearten
himself.

He went out into the bright windy morning, and as he crossed the
fields he came up behind a red cow who was sitting upon her
haunches, intently reading a largish book bound in green leather,
but at sight of Manuel she hastily put aside the volume, and began
eating grass. Manuel went on, without comment, toward the river
bank, to meet the image which he had made of clay, and to which
through unholy arts he had given life.

The thing came up out of the glistening ripples of brown water,
and the thing embraced Manuel and kissed him. "I am pagan," the
thing said, in a sweet mournful voice, "and therefore I might not
come to you until your love was given to the unchristened. For I
was not ever christened, and so my true name is not known to
anybody. But in the far lands where I am worshipped as a god I am
called Sesphra of the Dreams."

"I did not give you any name," said Manuel; and then he said:
"Sesphra, you that have the appearance of Alianora and of my youth!
Sesphra, how beautiful you are!"

"Is that why you are trembling, Manuel?"

"I tremble because the depths of my being have been shaken.
Since youth went out of me, in the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, I
have lived through days made up of small frettings and little
pleasures and only half earnest desires, which moved about upon the
surface of my being like minnows in the shoals of a still lake. But
now that I have seen and heard you, Sesphra of the Dreams, and your
lips have touched my lips, a passion moves in me that possesses all
of me, and I am frightened."

"It is the passion which informs those who make images. It is
the master you denied, poor foolish Manuel, and the master who will
take no denial."

"Sesphra, what is your will with me?"

"It is my will that you and I go hence on a long journey, into
the far lands where I am worshipped as a god. For I love you, my
creator, who gave life to me, and you love me more than aught else,
and it is not right that we be parted."

"I cannot go on any journey, just now, for I have my lands and
castles to regain, and my wife and my newborn child to
protect."

Sesphra began to smile adorably: you saw that his teeth were
strangely white and very strong. "What are these things to me or
you, or to anyone that makes images? We follow after our own
thinking and our own desires."

"I lived thus once upon a time," said Manuel, sighing, "but
nowadays there is a bond upon me to provide for my wife, and for my
child too, and I have not much leisure left for anything else."

Then Sesphra began to speak adorably, as he walked on the river
bank, with one arm about Dom Manuel. Always Sesphra limped as he
walked. A stiff and obdurate wind was ruffling the broad brown
shining water, and as they walked, this wind buffeted them, and
tore at their clothing. Manuel clung to his hat with one hand, and
with the other held to lame Sesphra of the Dreams. Sesphra talked
of matters not to be recorded.

"That is a handsome ring you have there," says Sesphra, by and
by.

"It is the ring my wife gave me when we were married," Manuel
replied.

"Then you must give it to me, dear Manuel."

"No, no, I cannot part with it."

"But it is beautiful, and I want it," Sesphra said. So Manuel
gave him the ring.

Now Sesphra began again to talk of matters not to be
recorded.

"Sesphra of the Dreams," says Manuel, presently, "you are
bewitching me, for when I listen to you I see that Manuel's
imperilled lands make such a part of earth as one grain of sand
contributes to the long narrow beach we are treading. I see my fond
wife Niafer as a plain-featured and dull woman, not in any way
remarkable among the millions of such women as are at this moment
preparing breakfast or fretting over other small tasks. I see my
newborn child as a mewing lump of flesh. And I see Sesphra whom I
made so strong and strange and beautiful, and it is as if in a half
daze I hear that obdurate wind commingled with the sweet voice of
Sesphra while you are talking of matters which it is not safe to
talk about."

"Yes, that is the way it is, Manuel, and the way it should be,
and the way it always will be as long as life is spared to you,
now. So let us go into the house, and write droll letters to King
Helmas and Raymond Bérenger and Queen Stultitia, in reply to
the fine offers they have been making you."

They came back into the empty banquet-hall. This place was paved
with mother of pearl and copper; six porphyry columns supported the
musicians' gallery. To the other end were two alabaster urns upon
green pedestals that were covered with golden writing in the old
Dirgham.

Here Manuel cleared away the embossed silver plates from one
corner of the table. He took pen and ink, and Sesphra told him what
to write.

Sesphra sat with arms folded, and as he dictated he looked up at
the ceiling. This ceiling was of mosaic work, showing four winged
creatures that veiled their faces with crimson and orange-tawny
wings; suspended from this ceiling by bronze chains hung ostrich
eggs, bronze lamps and globes of crystal.

"But these are very insulting replies," observed Dom Manuel,
when he had finished writing, "and they will make their recipients
furious. These princes, Sesphra, are my good friends, and they are
powerful friends, upon whose favor I am dependent."

"Yes, but how beautiful these replies are worded! See now, dear
Manuel, how divertingly you have described King Helmas' hideous
nose in your letter to King Helmas, and how trenchant is that
paragraph about the scales of his mermaid wife—"

"I admit that passage is rather droll—"

"—And in your letter to the pious Queen Stultitia that
which you say about the absurdities of religion, here, and the fun
you make of her spectacles, are masterpieces of paradox and of very
exquisite prose—"

"Those bits, to be sure, are quite neatly put—"

"—So I must see to it that these replies are sent, to make
people admire you everywhere."

"Yet, Sesphra, all these princes are my friends, and their
goodwill is necessary to me—"

"No, Manuel. For you and I will not bother about these stupid
princes any more, nor will you need any friends except me; for we
will go to this and that remote strange place, and our manner of
living will be such and such, and we will do so and so, and we will
travel everywhither and see the ends of this world and judge them.
And we will not ever be parted until you die."

"What will you do then, dear Sesphra?" Manuel asks him
fondly.

"I shall survive you, as all gods outlive their creators. And I
must depute the building of your monument to men of feeble minds
which have been properly impaired by futile studies and senility.
That is the way in which all gods are doomed to deal with their
creators: but that need not trouble us as yet."

"No," Manuel said, "I cannot go with you. For in my heart is
enkindling such love of you as frightens me."

"It is through love men win to happiness, poor lonely
Manuel."

Now when Manuel answered Sesphra there was in Manuel's face
trouble and bewilderment. And Manuel said:

"Under your dear bewitchments, Sesphra, I confess that through
love men win to sick disgust and self-despising, and for that
reason I will not love any more. Now breathlessly the tall lads run
to clutch at stars, above the brink of a drab quagmire, and
presently time trips them—Oh, Sesphra, wicked Sesphra of the
Dreams, you have laid upon me a magic so strong that, horrified, I
hear the truth come babbling from long-guarded lips which no longer
obey me, because of your dear bewitchments.

"Look you, adorable and all-masterful Sesphra, I have followed
noble loves. I aspired to the Unattainable Princess, and thereafter
to the unattainable Queen of a race that is more fine and potent
than our race, and afterward I would have no less a love than an
unattainable angel in paradise. Hah, I must be fit mate for that
which is above me, was my crying in the old days; and such were the
indomitable desires that one by one have made my living wonderful
with dear bewitchments.

"The devil of it was that these proud aims did not stay
unattained! Instead, I was cursed by getting my will, and always my
reward was nothing marvelous and rare, but that quite ordinary
figure of earth, a human woman. And always in some dripping dawn I
have turned with abhorrence from myself and from the sated folly
that had hankered for such prizes, which, when possessed, showed as
not wonderful in anything, and which possession left likable
enough, but stripped of dear bewitchments.

"No, Sesphra, no: men are so made that they must desire to mate
with some woman or another, and they are furthermore so made that
to mate with a woman does not content their desire. And in this
gaming there is no gain, because the end of loving, for everybody
except those lucky persons whose love is not requited, must always
be a sick disgust and a self-despising, which the wise will conduct
in silence, and not talk about as I am talking now under your dear
bewitchments."

Then Sesphra smiled a little, saying, "And yet, poor Manuel,
there is, they tell me, no more uxorious husband anywhere."

"I am used to her," Manuel replied, forlornly, "and I suppose
that if she were taken away from me again I would again be
attempting to fetch her back. And I do not like to hurt the poor
foolish heart of her by going against her foolish notions. Besides,
I am a little afraid of her, because she is always able to make me
uncomfortable. And above all, of course, the hero of a famous
love-affair, such as ours has become, with those damned poets
everywhere making rhymes about my fidelity and devotion, has to
preserve appearances. So I get through each day, somehow, by never
listening very attentively to the interminable things she tells me
about. But I often wonder, as I am sure all husbands wonder, why
Heaven ever made a creature so tedious and so unreasonably dull of
wit and so opinionated. And when I think that for the rest of time
this creature is to be my companion I usually go out and kill
somebody. Then I come back, because she knows the way I like my
toast."

"Instead, dear Manuel, you must go away from this woman who does
not understand you—"

"Yes," Manuel said, with grave conviction, "that is exactly the
trouble."

"—And you must go with me who understand you all through.
And we will travel everywhither, so that we may see the ends of
this world and judge them."

"You tempt me, Sesphra, with an old undying desire, and you have
laid strong enchantments on me, but, no, I cannot go with you."

The hand of Sesphra closed upon the hand of Manuel
caressingly.

Manuel said: "I will go with you. But what will become of the
woman and the child whom I leave behind me unfriended?"

"That is true. There will be nobody to look out for them, and
they will perish miserably. That is not important, but perhaps upon
the whole it would be better for you to kill them before we depart
from Sargyll."

"Very well, then," says Manuel, "I will do that, but you must
come up into the room with me, for I cannot bear to lose sight of
you."

Now Sesphra smiled more unrestrainedly, and his teeth gleamed.
"I shall not ever leave you now until you die."

XXX

Farewell to Freydis

They went upstairs together, into the room with scarlet
hangings, and to the golden bed where, with seven sorts of fruit
properly arranged at the bedside, Dom Manuel's wife Niafer lay
asleep. Manuel drew his dagger. Niafer turned in her sleep, so that
she seemed to offer her round small throat to the raised knife. You
saw now that on the other side of the golden bed sat Queen Freydis,
making a rich glow of color there, and in her lap was the newborn
naked child.

Freydis rose, holding the child to her breast, and smiling. A
devil might smile thus upon contriving some new torment for lost
souls, but a fair woman's face should not be so cruel. Then this
evil joy passed from the face of Freydis. She dipped her fingers
into the bowl of water with which she had been bathing the child,
and with her finger-tips she made upon the child's forehead the
sign of a cross.

Said Freydis, "Melicent, I baptize thee in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Sesphra passed wildly toward the fireplace, crying, "A penny, a
penny, twopence, a penny and a half, and a halfpenny!" At his call
the fire shot forth tall flames, and Sesphra entered these flames
as a man goes between parted curtains, and instantly the fire
collapsed and was as it had been. Already the hands of Freydis were
moving deftly in the Sleep Charm, so that Niafer did not move.
Freydis to-day was resplendently robed in flame-colored silk, and
about her dark hair was a circlet of burnished copper.

Manuel had dropped his dagger so that the point of it pierced
the floor, and the weapon stood erect and quivering. But Manuel was
shaken for a moment more horribly than shook the dagger: you would
have said he was convulsed with horror and self-loathing. So for an
instant he waited, looking at Dame Niafer, who slept untroubled,
and at fiery-colored Freydis, who was smiling rather queerly: and
then the old composure came back to Manuel.

"Breaker of all oaths," says Freydis, "I must tell you that this
Sesphra is pagan, and cannot thrive except among those whose love
is given to the unchristened. Thus he might not come to Sargyll
until the arrival of this little heathen whom I have just made
Christian. Now we have only Christian terrors here; and again your
fate is in my hands."

Dom Manuel looked grave. "Freydis," he said, "you have rescued
me from very unbecoming conduct. A moment more and I would have
slain my wife and child because of this Sesphra's resistless
magic."

Says Freydis, still smiling a queer secret smile: "Indeed, there
is no telling into what folly and misery Sesphra would not have led
you. For you fashioned his legs unevenly, and he has not ever
pardoned you his lameness."

"The thing is a devil," Manuel said. "And this is the figure I
desired to make, this is the child of my long dreams and labors!
This is the creature I designed to be more admirable and
significant than the drab men I found in streets and lanes and
palaces! Certainly, I have loosed among mankind a blighting misery
which I cannot control at all."

"The thing is you as you were once, gray Manuel. You had
comeliness and wit and youth and courage, and these you gave the
image, shaping it boldly to your proud youth's will and in your
proud youth's likeness. But human pity and any constant love you
did not then have to give, either to your fellows or to the fine
figure you made, nor, very certainly, to me. So you amused yourself
by making Sesphra and by making me that which we are to-day."

Now again showed subtly evil thoughts in the face of this shrewd
flaming woman who had so recently brought about the destruction of
King Thibaut, and of the Duke of Istria, and of those other
enamored lords. And Dom Manuel began to regard her more
intently.

In Manuel's sandals the average person would have reflected,
long before this, that Manuel and his wife and child were in this
sorcerous place at the mercy of the whims and the unwholesome
servitors of this not very dependable looking witch-woman. The
average person would have recollected distastefully that unusual
panther and that discomfortable night-porter and the madness which
had smitten Duke Asmund's men, and the clattering vicious little
hoofs of the shrill dwarfs; and to the average person this room
would have seemed a desirable place to be many leagues away
from.

But candid blunt Dom Manuel said, with jovial laughter: "You
speak as if you had not grown more adorable every day, dear
Freydis, and as though I would not be vastly flattered to think I
had any part in the improvement. You should not fish thus
unblushingly for compliments."

The sombre glitterings that were her eyes had narrowed, and she
was looking at his hands. Then Freydis said: "There are pin-points
of sweat upon the back of your hands, gray Manuel, and so alone do
I know that you are badly frightened. Yes, you are rather
wonderful, even now."

"I am not unduly frightened, but I am naturally upset by what
has just happened. Anybody would be. For I do not know what I must
anticipate in the future, and I wish that I had never meddled in
this mischancy business of creating things I cannot manage."

Queen Freydis moved in shimmering splendor toward the fireplace.
She paused there, considerately looking down at the small
contention of flames. "Did you not, though, again create much
misery when for your pleasure you gave life to this girl child?
Certainly you must know that there will be in her life—if
life indeed be long spared to her," said Freydis,
reflectively,—"far less of joy than of sorrow, for that is
the way it is with the life of everybody. But all this likewise is
out of your hands. In Sesphra and in the child and in me you have
lightly created that which you cannot control. No, it is I who
control the outcome."

Now a golden panther came quite noiselessly into the room, and
sat to the right of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel.

"Why, to be sure," says Manuel, heartily, "and I am sure, too,
that nobody is better qualified to handle it. Come now, Freydis,
just as you say, this is a serious situation, and something really
ought to be done about this situation. Come now, dear friend, in
what way can we take back the life we gave this lovely fiend?"

"And would I be wanting to kill my husband?" Queen Freydis
asked, and she smiled wonderfully. "Why, but yes, this fair lame
child of yours is my husband to-day,—poor, frightened,
fidgeting gray Manuel,—and I love him, for Sesphra is all
that you were when I loved you, Manuel, and when you condescended
to take your pleasure of me."

Now an orange-colored rat came into the room, and sat down upon
the hearth to the left hand of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel.
And the rat was is large as the panther.

Then Freydis said: "No, Manuel, Sesphra must live for a great
while, long after you have been turned to graveyard dust: and he
will limp about wherever pagans are to be found, and he will always
win much love from the high-hearted pagans because of his
comeliness and because of his unfading jaunty youth. And whether he
will do any good anywhere is doubtful, but it is certain he will do
harm, and it is equally certain that already he weighs my happiness
as carelessly as you once weighed it."

Now came into the room another creature, such as no madman has
ever seen or imagined, and it lay down at the feet of Freydis, and
it looked at Dom Manuel. Couched thus, this creature yawned and
disclosed unreassuring teeth.

"Well, Freydis," says Dom Manuel, handsomely, "but, to be sure,
what you tell me puts a new complexion upon matters, and not for
worlds would I be coming between husband and wife—"

Queen Freydis looked up from the flames, toward Dom Manuel, very
sadly. Freydis shrugged, flinging out her hands above the heads of
the accursed beasts. "And at the last I cannot do that, either. So
do you two dreary, unimportant, well-mated people remain
undestroyed, now that I go to seek my husband, and now I endeavor
to win my pardon for not letting him torment you. Eh, I was
tempted, gray Manuel, to let my masterful fine husband have his
pleasure of you, and of this lean ugly hobbling creature and her
brat, too, as formerly you had your pleasure of me. But women are
so queerly fashioned that at the last I cannot, quite, consent to
harm this gray, staid, tedious fellow, nor any of his chattels. For
all passes in this world save one thing only: and though the young
Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, be nowadays as
perished as that summer's gay leaves, it is certain a woman's folly
does not ever perish."

"Indeed, I did not merit that you should care for me," says
Manuel, rather unhappily. "But I have always been, and always shall
be sincerely fond of you, Freydis, and for that reason I rejoice to
deduce that you are not, now, going to do anything violent and
irreparable and such as your better nature would afterward
regret."

"I loved you once," she said, "and now I am assured the core of
you was always a cold and hard and colorless and very common
pebble. But it does not matter now that I am a mortal woman. Either
way, you have again made use of me. I have afforded you shelter
when you were homeless. And now again you will be getting your
desire."

Queen Freydis went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain
figured with ramping gold dragons; but the couching beasts stayed
by the hearth, and they continued to look at Dom Manuel.

"Yes, now again, gray Manuel, you will be getting your desire.
That ship which shows at the river bend, with serpents and castles
painted on its brown sails, is Miramon Lluagor's ship, which he has
sent to fetch you from Sargyll: and the last day of your days of
exile is now over. For Miramon is constrained by one who is above
us all; therefore Miramon comes gladly and very potently to assist
you. And I—who have served your turn!—I may now depart,
to look for Sesphra, and for my pardon if I can get it."

"But whither do you go, dear Freydis?" Dom Manuel spoke as
though he again felt quite fond of her.

"What does that matter," she answered, looking long and long at
him, "now that Count Manuel has no further need of me?" Then
Freydis looked at Niafer, lying there in a charmed sleep. "I
neither love nor entirely hate you, ugly and lame and lean and
fretful Niafer, but assuredly I do not envy you. You are welcome to
your fidgeting gray husband. My husband is a ruthless god. My
husband does not grow old and tender-hearted and subservient to me,
and he never will." Thereafter Freydis bent downward, and Freydis
kissed the child she had christened. "Some day you will be a woman,
Melicent, and then you will be loving some man or another man. I
could hope that you will then love the man who will make you happy,
but that sort of man has not yet been found."

Dom Manuel came to her, not heeding the accursed beasts at all,
and he took both the hands of Freydis in his hands. "My dear, and
do you think I am a happy man?"

She looked up at him: when she answered, her voice trembled. "I
made you happy, Manuel. I would have made you happy always."

"I wonder if you would have? Ah, well, at all events, the
obligation was upon me. At no time in a man's life, I find, is
there lacking some obligation or another: and we must meet each as
we best can, not hoping to succeed, just aiming not to fall short
too far. No, it is not a merry pursuit. And it is a ruining
pursuit!"

She said, "I had not thought ever to be sorry for you—Why
should I grieve for you, gray traitor?"

Harshly he answered: "Oho, I am not proud of what I have made of
my life, and of your life, and of the life of that woman yonder,
but do you think I will be whining about it! No, Freydis: the boy
that loved and deserted you is here,"—he beat upon his
breast,—"locked in, imprisoned while time lasts, dying very
lonelily. Well, I am a shrewd gaoler: he shall not get out. No,
even at the last, dear Freydis, there is the bond of silence."

She said, impotently, "I am sorry—Even at the last you
contrive for me a new sorrow—"

For a moment they stood looking at each other, and she
remembered thereafter his sad and quizzical smiling. These two had
nothing more to share in speech or deed.

Then Freydis went away, and the accursed beasts and her castle
too went with her, as smoke passes. Manuel was thus left standing
out of doors in a reaped field, alone with his wife and child while
Miramon's ship came about. Niafer slept. But now the child awoke to
regard the world into which she had been summoned willy-nilly, and
the child began to whimper.

Dom Manuel patted this intimidating small creature gingerly,
with a strong comely hand from which his wedding ring was missing.
That would require explanations.

It therefore seems not improbable that he gave over this brief
period of waiting, in a reaped field, to wondering just how much
about the past he might judiciously tell his wife when she awoke to
question him, because in the old days that was a problem which no
considerate husband failed to weigh with care.