emerged. He was interested, for it might well be rather amusing to
overtake this whispered-about Janicot in the midst of his sombre work:
but, even so, the thoughts of Florian were not wholly given over to
Janicot, or to Marie-Claire either. Instead, he was still thinking of
the sleeping woman’s face which he had not ever forgotten utterly: and
this dark sullen sister of his—who had once been so pretty too, he
recollected,—and all her injudicious traffic seemed, somehow, rather
futile.
No, he reflected, Marie-Claire was not pretty now. Her neck remained
wonderful: it was still the only woman’s neck familiar to Florian that
really justified comparison with a swan’s neck by its unusual length
and roundness and flexibility. But her head was too small for that
superb neck: she had taken on the dusky pallor of a Puysange: she was,
in fine, thirty-five, and looked rather older. It showed you what
irregular and sorcerous living might lead to. Florian at thirty-five
looked—at most, he estimated,—twenty-eight. Yes: it was much more
sensible to adhere to precedent, and to keep all one’s accounts in
order, through St. Hoprig’s loving care, and to retain overhead a
thrifty balance in one’s favor.
_5._
_Friendly Advice of Janicot_
When he had entered a little way into Acaire, Florian came to an open
place, where seven trees had been hewn down. A brown horse was tethered
here, and here seven lilies bloomed with a surprising splendor of
white and gold. These stood waist-high about a sedate looking burgess,
unostentatiously but very neatly dressed in some brown stuff, which
was just the color of his skin. At his feet was a shrub covered with
crimson flowers: no sun shone here, the sky was clouded and cast down a
coppery glow.
Such was Janicot. Florian saluted him, quite civilly, but with
appropriate reserve.
“Come,” Janicot said, smiling, “and is this the rapturous countenance
of a bridegroom? I am not pleased with you, Monsieur the Duke, I must
have happy faces among my friends.”
“So you also have heard of my approaching marriage! Well, I am content
enough, and for me to marry the co-heiress of Nérac seems logical:
but in logic, too, I cannot ignore that I ride toward a disappointing
business. There is magic in the curiously clothed woman who is
mistress of herself, the hour and you: but the prostrate, sweating and
submissive meat in a tangle of bed-clothing—!” Florian shrugged.
“In fact,” said Janicot, as if pensively, “I have observed you. You
do not enter wholly into the pleasures suitable for men and women:
you do not avoid these agreeabilities, but your sampling of them is
without self-surrender, and there is something else which you hold more
desirable.”
“That is true.” Florian for an instant meditated. Florian shrugged.
Then Florian dismounted from his white horse, and tethered it. Here was
the one being in whom you might confide logically. Florian told Janicot
the story of how, in childhood, Florian had ascended to the high place,
and had seen the Princess Melior, whom always since that time his heart
had desired.
And Janicot heard him through, with some marks of interest. Janicot
nodded.
“Yes, yes,” said Janicot. “I do not frequent high places. But I have
heard of this Melior, from men a long while dead, and they said that
she was beautiful.”
“Then they spoke foolishly,” replied Florian, “because they spoke
with pitiable inadequacy. Now I do not say that she is beautiful. I do
not speak any praise whatever of Melior, because her worth is beyond
all praising. I am silent as to the unforgotten beauty of Melior,
lest I cry out against that which I love. When I was but a child her
loveliness was revealed to me, and never since then have I been able to
forget the beauty of which all dreams go envious. I jest with women who
are lovable and nicely colored; they have soft voices, and their hearts
are kind: but presently I yawn and say they are not as Melior.”
“Ah, but in fact,” said Janicot, “in fact, you do—without caring to
commit yourself formally,—believe that this Melior is beautiful?”
Now Florian’s plump face was altered, and his voice shook a little. He
said:
“Her beauty is that beauty which women had in the world’s youth, and
whose components the old world forgets in this gray age. It may be that
Queen Helen possessed such beauty, she for whom the long warring was.
It may be that Cleopatra of Egypt, who had for her playmates emperors
and a gleaming snake, and for her lovers all poets that have ever
lived, or it may be that some other royal lady of the old time, in
the world’s youth, wore flesh that was the peer of Melior’s flesh in
loveliness. But such women, if there indeed was ever Melior’s peer,
are now vague echoes and blown dust. I cry the names that once were
magic. I cry to Semiramis and to Erigonê and to Guenevere, and there is
none to answer. Their beauty has gone down into the cold grave, it has
nourished grasses, and cattle chew the cud which was their loveliness.
Therefore I cry again, I cry the name of Melior: and though none
answers, I know that I cry upon the unflawed and living beauty which my
own eyes have seen.”
[Illustration:
Caption surrounded by a garland:
She waited—there was the miracle—
for FLORIAN DE PUYSANGE.
_See page 75_
The image]
Janicot sat on a tree-stump, stroking his chin with thumb and
fore-finger. He was entirely brown, with white and gold about him, and
the flowering at his neatly shod feet was more red than blood. He said:
“In that seeing, denied to all other living persons,—in that, at least,
you have been blessed.”
“In that,” said Florian, bitterly, “I was accursed. Because of this
beauty which I may not put out of mind, the tinsel prettiness of other
women becomes grotesque and pitiable and hateful. I strive to mate with
them, and I lie lonely in their arms. I seek for a mate, and I find
only meat and much talking. Then I regard the tedious stranger in whose
arms I discover myself, and I wonder what I am doing in this place. I
remember Melior, and I must rid myself of the fond foolish creature who
is not as Melior.”
“Ah, ah!” said Janicot then, “so that is how it is. I perceive you
are a romantic. The disorder is difficult to cure. Yet we must have
you losing no more wives: there must be an end to the ill luck which
follows your matrimonial adventures and causes hypercritical persons
to whisper. Yes, since you are a romantic, since all other women upset
your equanimity and lead you into bereavements which people, let me
tell you, are festooning with ugly surmises, you certainly must have
this Melior.”
“No,” Florian said, wistfully, “there is an etiquette in these matters.
Even if I cared to dabble in sorcery, it would not be quite courteous
for me to interfere with the magic which Madame Mélusine has laid upon
the high place and her blood relations. It would be meddling in her
family affairs, it would be an incivility without precedent, to her who
was so kind to me in my childhood.”
“You think too much about precedent, Monsieur the Duke. In any event,
Mélusine has half forgotten the matter. So much has happened to her, in
the last several hundred years, that her mind has quite gone. She cares
only to wail upon battlements and to pass through dusky corridors at
twilight, predicting the deaths of her various descendants. You can see
for yourself that these are not the recreations of a logical person.
No, Florian, you are considerate, and it does you great credit, but
you would not annoy Madame Mélusine by releasing Brunbelois.”
Said Florian, gently: “My intimates, to be sure, address me as Florian.
But our acquaintance, Monsieur Janicot, however delightful, remains as
yet of such brevity that, really, whether you be human or divine—”
“Oh, but, Monsieur the Duke,” replied the other, “but indeed I entreat
your pardon for my inadvertence.”
And Florian too bowed. “It is merely a social convention, of course.
Yet it is necessary to respect the best precedents even in trifles.
Well, now, and as to your suggestion, I confess you tempt me—”
“Only, you could not free Brunbelois unaided, nor could any living
sorcerer. For Mélusine’s was the Old Magic that is stronger than the
thin thaumaturgy of these days. Yet I desire to have happy faces about
me, so I will give you this Melior for a while.”
“And at what price?”
“I who am the Prince of this World am not a merchant to buy and sell.
I will release the castle, and you may have the girl as a free gift. I
warn you, though, that, since she is of the Léshy, at the year’s end
she will vanish.”
Florian shook his head, smilingly. He knew of course that marriage
with one of the Léshy could not be permanent. But this fiend must
believe him very simple indeed, if Janicot thought Florian so
uninformed as not to know that whoever accepts a gift from hell is
thereby condemned to burn eternally: and to perceive this amused
Florian.
“Ah, Monsieur Janicot, but a Puysange cannot take alms from anybody.
No, let us be logical! There must be a price set and paid, so that I
may remain under no distasteful and incendiary debts.”
Janicot hid excellently the disappointment he must have felt. “Then
suppose we fix it that she is yours until you have had a child by her?
And that then she will vanish, and that then the child is to be given
me, as my honorarium, by”—Janicot explained,—“the old ritual.”
“Well,” Florian replied, “I may logically take this to be a case of
desperate necessity, since all my happiness depends upon it. Now in
such cases Paracelsus admits the lawfulness of seeking aid from—if
you will pardon the technical term, Monsieur Janicot,—from unclean
spirits. He is supported in this, as I remember it, by Peter Ærodius,
by Bartolus of Sassoferato, by Salecitus, and by other divines and
schoolmen. So I have honorable precedents, I do not offend against
convention. Yes, I accept the offer; and the child, whatever my
paternal pangs, shall be given, as your honorarium, by the old ritual.”
“Of course,” said Janicot, reflectively, “if there should be no child—”
“Monsieur, I am Puysange. There will be a child.”
“Why, then, it is settled. Now I think of it, you will need the sword
Flamberge with which to perform this rite, since Melior is of the
Léshy, and that sword alone of all swords may spill their blood—”
“But where is Flamberge nowadays?”
“There is one at home, in an earthen pot, who could inform you.”
“Let us not speak of that,” said Florian, hastily, “but do you tell me
where is this sword.”
“I have no notion as to the present whereabouts of Flamberge. Nor,
since you stickle for etiquette, is it etiquette for me to aid you in
finding this sword until you have made me a sacrifice.”
“Why, but you offered Melior as a free gift!” said Florian, smiling to
see how obvious were the traps this Janicot set for him. “Is a princess
of smaller importance than a sword?”
“A princess is easier to get, because a princess is easier to make.
A sword, far less a magic sword like Flamberge, cannot be fashioned
without long training and preparation and special knowledge. But no
man needs more than privacy and a queen’s goodwill to make a princess.”
“I confess, Monsieur Janicot, that your logic is indisputable. Well,
when at the winter solstice you hold your Festival of the Wheel, I
shall not sacrifice to you. That would be to relapse into the old
evil ways of heathenry, a relapse for which is appointed an agonizing
reproof, administered in realms unnecessary to mention, but doubtless
familiar to you. However, I shall be glad to tender you a suitable
Christmas present, since that sacred season falls at the same time.”
“You may call it whatever you prefer. But it must be a worthy gift that
one offers me at my Yule Feast.”
“You shall have—not as a sacrifice, you understand, but as a Christmas
present,—the greatest man living in France. You shall have no less a
gift than the life of that weasel-faced prime-minister who now rules
France, the all-powerful Cardinal Dubois. For the rest, your bargain
is reasonable: it contains none of those rash mortgagings of the
soul, about which—if you will pardon my habitual frankness, Monsieur
Janicot,—one has to be careful in all business dealings with your
people. So let us subscribe this bond.”
Janicot laughed: his traffic was not in souls, he said; and he said
also that Florian, for a nobleman, was deplorably the man of business.
None the less, Janicot now produced from his pocket a paper upon which
the terms of their bargain happened, rather unaccountably, to be neatly
written out: and they both signed this paper, with the pens and ink
which Florian had not previously noticed to be laid there so close at
hand, upon one of the tree-stumps.
Then Janicot put up the paper, and remarked: “A thing done has an end.
For the rest, these fellows will escort you to Brunbelois.”
“And of what fellows do you speak?” asked Florian.
“Why, those servants of mine just behind you,” replied Janicot.
And Florian, turning, saw in the roadway two very hairy persons in an
oxcart, drawn by two brown goats which were as large as oxen; and yet
Florian was certain no one of these things had been in that place an
instant before. This Janicot, however easy to see through had been his
traps for Florian, was beyond doubt efficient.
Florian said: “The liveries of your retainers tend somewhat to the
capillary. None the less, I shall be deeply honored, monsieur, to be
attended by any servants of your household.”
Janicot replied: “Madame Mélusine has ordained against men and the
living of mankind eternal banishment from the high place. Very well!”
He drew his sword, and without any apparent effort he struck off the
head of his brown horse. He set this head upon a stake, and he thrust
the other end of the stake into the ground, so that the stake stood
upright.
“I here set up,” said Janicot, “a nithing post. I turn the post. I turn
the eternal banishment against Madame Mélusine.”
He waited for a moment. He was entirely brown: about him lilies
bloomed, with a surprising splendor of white and gold: and the
flowering at his feet was more red than blood.
He moved the stake so that the horse’s head now faced the east, and
Janicot said: “Also I turn this post against the protecting monsters
of the high place, in order that they may all become as witless as now
is this slain horse. I send a witlessness upon them from the nithing
post, which makes witless and takes away the strength of the rulers and
of the controlling gods of whatever land this nithing post be turned
against. I, who am what I am, have turned the post. I have sent forth
the Seeing of All, the Seeing that makes witless. A thing done has an
end.”
_6._
_Philosophy of the Lower Class_
Florian parted from brown Janicot for that while, and mounted his
white horse, and rode upward toward the castle of Brunbelois, without
further thought of the girl at Storisende whom logic had picked out
to be his wife. Florian was followed by the oxcart which Janicot had
provided. Florian found all the monsters lying in a witless stupor.
So he fearlessly set upon and killed the black bleps and the crested
strycophanês and the gray calcar.
He passed on upward, presently to decapitate the eale, which writhed
its movable horns very remarkably in dying. Florian went on intrepidly,
and despatched the golden-maned and-whiskered leucrocotta. The
tarandus, farther up the road, proved more troublesome: this monster
had, after its sly habit, taken on the coloring of the spot in which it
lay concealed, so that it was hard to find; and, when found, its hide
was so tough as to resist for some while the edge of Florian’s sword.
The thin and flabby neck of the catoblepas was in contrast gratifyingly
easy to sever. Indeed, this was in all respects a contemptible monster,
dingily colored, and in no way formidable now that its eyes were shut.
Florian’s heroic butchery was well-nigh over: so he passed on cheerily
to the next turn in the road; and in that place a moment later the
bright red mantichora was impotently thrusting out its sting in the
death agony, a sudden wind came up from the west, and the posture of
the sun was changed.
Having dauntlessly performed these unmatched feats, the champion paused
to reward himself with a pinch of snuff. The lid of his snuff-box bore
the portrait of his dear friend and patron, Philippe d’Orléans, and
it seemed odd to be regarding familiar features in these mischancy
uplands. Then Florian, refreshed, looked about him. Three incredibly
weather-beaten sheep were grazing to his right: to the left he saw,
framed by the foliage upon each side of and overhanging the green
roadway, the castle of Brunbelois.
Thus one by one did Florian cut off the heads of the seven wardens,
with real regret—excepting only when he killed the catoblepas,—that his
needs compelled him to destroy such colorful and charming monsters.
The two remarkably hairy persons, without ever speaking, lifted each
enormous head, one by one, into the cart. The party mounted within
eyeshot of Brunbelois thus triumphantly. And at Brunbelois, where the
old time yet lingered, the hour was not afternoon but early morning:
and at the instant Florian slew the mantichora all the persons within
the castle had awakened from what they thought was one night’s resting.
Now the first of the awakened Peohtes whom Florian encountered was a
milkmaid coming down from Brunbelois with five cows. What Florian could
see of her was pleasurably shaped and tinted. He looked long at her.
“To pause now for any frivolous reason,” reflected Florian, “or to
disfigure in any way the moment in which I approach my life’s desire,
is of course unthinkable—”
Meanwhile the milkmaid looked at Florian. She smiled, and her naturally
high coloring was heightened.
“—So I do not pause for frivolous reasons. I pause because one must be
logical. For, now that I think of it, to rescue people from enchantment
is a logical proceeding only when one is certain that this rescuing
involves some positive gain to the world. Do you drive on a little
way, and wait for me,” said Florian, aloud, to his hirsute attendants,
“while I discover from this enticing creature what sort of persons we
have resurrected.”
The hairy servants of Janicot obeyed. Florian, very spruce in
bottle-green and silver, dismounted from his white horse, and in the
ancient roadway now overgrown with grass, held amicable discourse with
this age-old milkmaid. She proved at bottom not wholly unsophisticated.
And when they parted, each had been agreeably convinced that the
persons of one era are much like those of another.
Florian thus came to the gates of Brunbelois logically reassured
that he had done well in reviving such persons, even at the cost of
destroying charming monsters and of the labor involved in removing so
many heads. He counted smilingly on his finger-tips, but such was his
pleased abstraction that he miscalculated, and made the total eight.
He found that, now the enchantment was lifted, Brunbelois showed in
every respect as a fine old castle of the architecture indigenous
to fairy tales. Flags were flying from the turrets; sentinels,
delightfully shiny in the early morning sunlight, were pacing the
walls, on the look-out for enemies that had died many hundred years
ago; and at the gate was a night-porter, not yet off duty. This porter
wore red garments worked with yellow thistles, and he seemed dejected
but philosophic.
“Whence come you, in those queer dusty clothes?” inquired the porter,
“and what is your business here?”
“Announce to King Helmas,” said Florian, as he brushed the dust from
his bottle-green knees, and saw with regret that nothing could be done
about the grass-stains, which, possibly, had got there when he knelt to
cut off the tarandus’ head,—“announce to King Helmas that the lord of
Puysange is at hand.”
“You are talking, sir,” the porter answered, resignedly, “most
regrettable nonsense. For the knife is in the collops, the mead is in
the drinking-horn, the eggs are upon the toast, the minstrels are in
the gallery, and King Helmas is having breakfast.”
“None the less, I have important business with him—”
“Equally none the less, nobody may enter at this hour unless he is
the son of a king of a privileged country or a craftsman bringing his
craft.”
“Parbleu, but that is it, precisely. For I bring in that wagon very
fine samples of my craft.”
The porter left his small grilled lodge. He looked at the piled heads
of the monsters, he poked them with his finger, and he said mildly,
“Why, but did you ever!” Then he returned to the gate.
“Now, my friend,” said Florian, with the appropriate stateliness, “I
charge you, by all the color and ugliness of these samples of my craft,
to announce to your king that the lord of Puysange is at the gate with
tidings, and with proof, that the enchantment is happily lifted from
this castle.”
“So there has been an enchantment. I suspected something of the sort
when I came to, after nodding a bit like in the night, and noticed the
remarkably thick forest that had grown up everywhere around us.”
Florian observed, to this degraded underling who seemed not capable of
appreciating Florian’s fine exploits, “Well, certainly you take all
marvels very calmly.”
The sad porter replied that, with a reigning family so given to high
temper and sorcery, the retainers of Brunbelois were not easily
astounded. Something in the shape of an enchantment had been predicted
in the kitchen last night, he continued, after the notable quarrel
between Madame Mélusine and her father.
“My friend,” said Florian, “that was not last night. You speak of a
disastrous family jar in which the milk of human kindness curdled
several centuries ago. Since then there has been an enchantment laid
upon Brunbelois: and the spell was lifted only to-day.”
“Do you mean, sir, that I am actually several hundred and fifty-two
years old?”
“Somewhere in that November neighborhood,” said Florian. And he steeled
himself against the other’s outburst of horror and amazement.
“To think of that now!” said the porter. “I certainly never imagined it
would come to that. However, it is always a great comfort to reflect it
hardly matters what happens to us, is it not, sir?”
You could not but find, in this stubborn unwillingness to face the
magnitude of Florian’s exploits, something horribly prosaic and
callous. Yet, none the less, Florian civilly asked the man’s meaning.
And the dejected porter replied:
“It is just a sort of fancying, sir, that one wanders into after
watching the stars, as I do in the way of business, night after night.
One gets to reading them and to a sort of glancing over of the story
that is written in their courses. Yes, sir, one does fall into the
habit, injudiciously perhaps, but then there is nothing else much
to do. And one does not find there quite, as you might put it, the
excitement over the famousness of kings and the ruining of empires
that one might reasonably look for. And one does not find anything at
all there about porters, I can assure you, sir, because they are not
important enough to figure in that story. There is no more writing in
the stars about night-porters than there is about bumble-bees; and that
is always a great comfort, sir, when one feels low-spirited. Because
I would not care to be in that story, myself, for it is not light
pleasant reading.”
“A pest! so you inform me, with somewhat the gay levity of an oyster,
that you can read the stars!”
The porter admitted dolefully, “One does come to it, sir, in my way of
business.”
“And how many chapters, I wonder, are written in the heavens about me?”
The porter looked at Florian for some while. The porter said, now even
more dolefully: “I would not be surprised if there was a line somewhere
about you, sir. For your planet is Venus, and her people do get written
about in an excessive way, there is no denying it. And I would not care
to be one of them, myself, but of course there is no accounting for
tastes, even if anybody anywhere had any say in the matter.”
“Parbleu, you may be right about my planet,” said Florian, smiling for
reasons of his own. “Yet, as an artless veteran of the first and second
Pubic Wars, I do not see how you can be certain.”