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FIGURES OF EARTH
A Comedy of Appearances
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
Illustrated by Frank C. Papé
1921
"Cascun se mir el jove Manuel, Qu'era del mom lo plus valens
dels pros."
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
XXXIII 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[Footnote 1: Omitted in this edition since it was not possible to include
all of Frank C. Papé's magnificent illustrations.--THE PUBLISHER]
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
A FOREWORD
"Amoto quoeramus seria ludo"
To
SINCLAIR LEWIS
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
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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: