born under this planet is of fair but not tall stature, his complexion
being white but tending a little to darkness. He has fine black hair,
the brows arched, the face pretty fleshy, a cherry lip, a rolling
wandering eye. He has a love-dimple in his cheek, and shows in all
as one desirous of trimming and making himself neat and complete in
clothes and body. Now these things I see in your corporature and in the
fretfulness with which you look at the grass-stains on your knees. So
your planet is evident.”
“That is possible, your speech has a fine ring of logic, and logic
is less common than hens’ teeth. Upon what sort of persons does this
honorable planet attend?”
“If you could call it attending, sir—For I must tell you that these
planets have a sad loose way of not devoting their really undivided
attention to looking after the affairs of any one particular gentleman,
not even when they see him most magnificent in bottle-green and silver.”
“They are as remiss, then, as you are precise. So do you choose your
own verb, and tell me—”
“Sir,” replied the porter, “I regret to inform you that the person whom
Venus governs is riotous, expensive, wholly given to dissipation and
lewd companies of women and boys. He is nimble in entering unlawful
beds, he is incestuous, he is an adulterer, he is a mere skip-jack,
spending all his means among scandalous loose people: and he is in
nothing careful of the things of this life or of anything religious.”
Florian brightened. “That also sounds quite logical,—in the main,—for
you describe the ways of the best-thought-of persons since the old
King’s death. And one of course endeavors not to offend against the
notions of one’s neighbors by seeming a despiser of accepted modes.
But I must protest to you, my friend, you are utterly wrong in the
article of religion—”
“Oh, if you come hither to dispute about religion,” said the porter,
“the priests of Llaw Gyffes will attend to you. They love converting
people from religious errors, bless you, with their wild horses and
their red-hot irons. But, for one, I never argue about religion. You
conceive, sir, there is an entire chapter devoted to the subject, in
the writing we were just talking over: and I have read that chapter. So
I say nothing about religion. I like a bit of fun, myself: but when you
find it there, of all places, and on that scale—” Again the dejected
porter sighed. “However, I shall say no more. Instead, with your
permission, Messire de Puysange, I shall just step in, and send up your
news about the enchantment.”
This much the porter did, and Florian was left alone to amuse himself
by looking about. Through the gateway he saw into a court paved with
cobble-stones. Upon each side of the gate was an octagonal granite
tower with iron-barred windows: each tower was three stories in height,
and the battlements were coped with some sort of bright red stone.
Then Florian, for lack of other diversion, turned and looked idly down
the valley, toward Poictesme. There he saw something rather odd. A
mile-long bridge was flung across the west, and over it passed figures.
First came the appearance of a bear waddling upon his hind legs,
followed by an ape, and then by a huddled creature with long legs.
Florian saw also an unclothed woman, who danced as she went: over her
head fluttered a bird, and by means of a chain she haled after her a
sedentarily disposed pig. An incredibly old man followed, dressed in
faded blue, and he carried upon his arm an open basket. Last came a
shaggy dog, barking, it seemed, at all.
These figures were like clouds in their station and in their
indeterminable coloring and vague outline, but their moving was not
like the drifting of clouds: it was the walking of living creatures.
Florian for an instant wondered as to the nature and the business
of these beings that were passing over and away from Poictesme.
He shrugged. He believed the matter to be no concern of one whose
interests overhead were all in the efficient hands of Holy Hoprig.
_7._
_Adjustments of the Resurrected_
They brought Florian to Helmas the Deep-Minded, where the King sat
on a daīs with his Queen Pressina. The King was stately in scarlet
and ermine: his nose too was red, and to his crown was affixed the
Zhar-Ptitza’s silvery feather. Florian found his appearance far more
companionable than was that of the fat Queen (one of the water folk),
whose skin was faintly blue, and whose hair was undeniably green, and
whose little mouth seemed lost and discontented in her broad face.
Beside them, but not upon the dark red daīs, sat the high-priest of
Llaw Gyffes, a fine looking and benevolent prelate, in white robes
edged with a purple pattern of quaint intricacies: he wore a wreath of
mistletoe about his broad forehead; and around and above this played a
pulsing radiancy.
To these persons Florian told what had happened. When he had ended,
the Queen said she had never heard of such a thing in her life, that
it was precisely what she had predicted time and again, and that now
Helmas could see for himself what came of spoiling Mélusine, and
letting her have her own way about everything. The wise King answered
nothing whatever.
But the high-priest of Llaw Gyffes asked, “And how did you lift this
strong enchantment?”
“Monsieur, I removed it by the logical method of killing the seven
monsters who were its strength and symbol. That they are all quite
dead you can see for yourself,—if I may make so bold as to employ her
Majesty’s striking phrase,—by counting the assortment of heads which I
fetched hither with me.”
“Yes, to be sure,” the priest admitted. “Seven is seven the world
over: everywhere it is a number of mystic potency. It follows that
seven severed heads must predicate seven corpses; and such proofs are
indisputable, as far as they go—”
Still, he seemed troubled in his mind.
Then Helmas, the wise King, said, “It is my opinion that the one way to
encounter the unalterable is to do nothing about it.”
“Yes,” answered his wife, “and much that will help matters!”
“Nothing, my dear,” said the wise King, “helps matters. All matters are
controlled by fate and chance, and these help themselves to what they
have need of. These two it is that have taken from me a lordship that
had not its like in the known world, and have made the palaces that
we used to be feasting in, it still seems only yesterday, just little
piles of rubbish, and have puffed out my famousness the way that when
any man gets impudent a widow does a lamp. These two it is that leave
me nothing but this castle and this crevice in the hills where the old
time yet lingers. And I accept their sending, because there is no armor
against it, but I shall keep up my dignity by not letting even fate and
chance upset me with their playfulness. Here the old time shall be as
it has always been, and here I shall continue to do what was expected
of me yesterday. And about other matters I shall not bother, but I
shall leave everything, excepting only my self-respect, to fate and
chance. And I think that Hoprig will agree with me it is the way a wise
man ought to be acting.”
“Hoprig!” reflected Florian, looking at the halo. “But what the devil
is my patron saint doing here disguised as the high-priest of Llaw
Gyffes?”
“I am thinking over some other matters,” replied Hoprig, to the King,
“and it is in my thinking that nobody could manage to kill so many
monsters, and to release us from our long sleeping, unless he was a
sorcerer. So Messire de Puysange must be a sorcerer, and that is very
awkward, with our torture-chamber all out of repair—”
“Ah, monsieur,” said Florian, reproachfully, “and are these quite
charitable notions for a saint to be fostering? And, oh, monsieur, is
it quite fair for you to have been sleeping here this unconscionable
while, when you were supposed to be in heaven attending to the
remission of people’s sins?”
Hoprig replied: “What choice had I or anybody else except to sleep
under the Nis magic? For the rest, I do not presume to say what a saint
might or might not think of the affair, because in our worship of Llaw
Gyffes of the Steady Hand—”
“But I, monsieur, was referring to a very famous saint of the Christian
church, which has for some while counted the Dukes of Puysange among
its communicants, and is now our best-thought-of form of worship.”
“Oh, the Christians! Yes, I have heard of them. Indeed I now remember
very well how Ork and Horrig came into these parts preaching everywhere
the remarkable fancies of that sect until I discouraged them in the way
which seemed most salutary.”
Florian could make nothing of this. He said, “But how could you, of all
persons, have discouraged the spreading of Christianity?”
“I discouraged them with axes,” the saint replied, “and with
thumbscrews, and with burning them at the stake. For it really does
not pay to be subtle in dealing with people of that class: and you
have to base your appeal to their better nature upon quite obvious
arguments.”
“My faith, then, how it came about I cannot say, Monsieur Hoprig; but
for hundreds upon hundreds of years you have been a Christian saint.”
“Dear me!” observed the saint, “so that must be the explanation of
this halo. I noticed it of course. Still, our minds have been rather
pre-empted since we woke up—But, dear me, now, I am astounded,
and I know not what to say. I do say, though, that this is quite
extraordinary news for you to be bringing a well-thought-of high-priest
of Llaw Gyffes.”
“Nevertheless, monsieur, for all that you have never been anything but
a high-priest of the heathen, and a persecutor of the true faith, I can
assure you that you have, somehow, been canonized. And I am afraid that
during the long while you have been asleep your actions must have been
woefully misrepresented. Monsieur,” said Florian, hopefully, “at least,
though, was it not true about your being in the barrel?”
“Why, but how could ever you,” the saint marveled, “have heard about
that rain-barrel? The incident, in any case, has been made far
too much of. You conceive, it was merely that the man came home
most unexpectedly; and since all husbands are at times and in some
circumstances so unreasonable—”
“Ah, monsieur,” said Florian, shaking his head, “I am afraid you do not
speak of quite the barrel which is in your legend.”
“So I have a legend! Why, how delightful! But come,” said the saint,
abeam with honest pleasure, and with his halo twinkling merrily, “come,
be communicative; be copious, and tell me all about myself.”
Then Florian told Hoprig of how, after Hoprig’s supposed death,
miracles had been worked at Hoprig’s putative tomb, near Gol, and this
legend and that legend had grown up around his memory, and how these
things had led to Hoprig’s being canonized. And Florian alluded also,
with perfect tact but a little ruefully, to those fine donations he
had been giving, year in and year out, to the Church of Holy Hoprig,
under the impression that all the while the saint had been, instead of
snoring at Brunbelois, looking out for Florian’s interests in heaven.
And Hoprig now seemed rather pensive, and he inquired particularly
about his tomb.
“I shall take this,” the saint said, at last, “to be the fit reward
of my tender-heartedness. The tomb near Gol of which you tell me is
the tomb in which I buried that Horrig about whom I was just talking,
after we had settled our difference of opinion as to some points of
theology. Ork was so widely scattered that any formal interment was
quite out of the question. My priests are dear, well-meaning fellows.
Still, you conceive, they are conscientious, and they enter with such
zeal into the performance of any manifest if painful duty—”
Florian said: “They exhibited the archetypal zeal becoming to the
ministers of an established church in the defence of their vested
rights. They were, with primitive inadequacy, groping toward the
methods of our Holy Inquisition and of civilized prelates everywhere—”
“—So they were quite tired out when we passed on to Horrig’s case. I
do not deny that I was perhaps unduly lenient about Horrig. It was the
general opinion that, tired as we were, this blasphemer against the
religious principles of our fathers ought to be burned at the stake,
and have his ashes scattered to the winds. But I was merciful. I had
eaten an extremely light breakfast. So I merely had him broken on the
wheel and decapitated, and we got through our morning’s work, after
all, in good time for dinner: and I gave him a very nice tomb indeed,
with his name on it in capital letters. Dear me!” observed Holy Hoprig,
with a marked increase of his benevolent smile, “but how drolly things
fall out! If the name had not been in capital letters, now, I would
probably never have been wearing this halo which surprised me so this
morning when I went to brush my hair—”
“But what has happened?” said the Queen.
“Why, madame,” replied the saint, “I take it that, with the passage
of years, the tail of the first R in the poor dear fellow’s name was
somewhat worn away. So when such miracles began to occur at his tomb
as customarily emanate from the tombs of martyrs to any faith which
later is taken up by really nice people, here were tangible and exact
proofs, to the letter, of the holiness of Hoprig. In consequence, this
Christian church has naturally canonized me.”
“That was quite civil of them of course, if this is considered the
best-thought-of church. But, still,” the Queen said, doubtfully, “the
miracles must have meant that Horrig was right, and you were wrong.”
“Certainly, madame, it would seem so, as a matter of purely academic
interest. For now that his church is so well-thought-of everywhere
and has canonized me, I must turn Christian, if only to show my
appreciation of the compliment. So there is no possible harm done.”
“But in that case, it was Horrig that ought to have been made a saint
of.”
“Now I, madame, for one, cherish humility too much to dare assert any
such thing. For the ways of Providence are proverbially inscrutable:
and it well may be that the abrasion of the tail of that R was also,
in its quiet way, a direct intervention of Heaven to reward my
mercifulness in according Horrig a comparatively pleasant martyrdom.”
“Yes, but it was he, after all, who had to put up with that martyrdom,
on a dreadfully depressing rainy morning, too, I remember, whereas you
get sainthood out of the affair without putting up with anything.”
“Do I not have to put up with this halo? How can I now hope to go
anywhere after dark without being observed? Ah, no, madame, I greatly
fear this canonization will cost me a host of friends by adorning
my visits with such conspicuous publicity. Nevertheless, I do not
complain. Instead, I philosophically recognize that well-bred women
must avoid all ostentation, and that the ways of Providence are
inscrutable.”
“That is quite true,” observed King Helmas, at this point, “and I think
that nothing is to be gained by you two discussing these ways any more.
The poets and the philosophers in every place have for a long while
now had a heaviness in their minds about Providence, and the friendly
advice they have been giving is not yet all acted upon. So let us leave
Providence to look out for itself, the way we would if Providence
had wisdom teeth. And let us turn to other matters, and to hearing
what reward is asked by the champion who has rescued us from our long
sleeping.”
“I too,” replied Florian, “if I may make so bold as to borrow the
phrase used by your Majesty just now—that phrase by which I was
immeasurably impressed, that phrase which still remains to me a
vocalisation of supreme wisdom in terms so apt and striking—”
“Wisdom,” said the King, “was miraculously bestowed upon me a great
while ago as a free gift, which I had done nothing to earn and deserve
no credit for not having been able to avoid. And my way of talking, and
using similes and syntax,—along with phraseology and monostiches and
aposiopesis and such-like things,—is another gift, also, which I employ
without really noticing the astonishment and admiration of my hearers.
So do you not talk so much, but come to the point.”
“I too, then, in your Majesty’s transcendent phrase, shall do what was
expected of me yesterday. I ask the hand of the King’s daughter in
marriage.”
“That is customary,” wise Helmas said, with approval, “and you show a
very fine sense of courtesy in adhering to our perhaps old-fashioned
ways. Let the lord of Puysange be taken to his betrothed.”
_8._
_At the Top of the World_
“You will find her,” they had said, “yonder,”—and, pointing westerly,
had left him. So Florian went unaccompanied through the long pergola
overgrown with grape-vines, toward the lone figure at the end of this
tunnel of rustling greenness and sweet odors. A woman waited there, in
an eight-sided summer-house, builded of widely-spaced lattice-work that
was hidden by vines. Through these vines you could see on every side
the fluttering bright gardens of Brunbelois, but no living creature.
This woman and Florian were alone in what was not unlike a lovely cage
of vines. Florian seemed troubled. It was apparent that he knew this
woman.
“I am flesh and blood,” the woman said,—“as you may remember.”
“Indeed, I have been singularly fortunate—But upon reflection, I
retract the adverb. I have been marvelously fortunate; and I have no
desire to forget it.”
“She also, the girl yonder, is flesh and blood. You will be knowing
that before long.”
Florian looked at this woman for some while. “Perhaps that is true.
I think it is not true. I have faith in the love which has endured
since I was but a child. If that fails me, I must die. And I shall die
willingly.”
He bowed low to this woman, and he passed on, through the summer-house,
and out into the open air. He came thus to a wall, only breast high,
and opened the gate which was there, and so went on in full sunlight,
ascending a steepish incline that was overgrown with coarse grass and
with much white clover. Thus Florian came to the unforgotten princess
and to the beauty which he had in childhood, however briefly, seen.
There was in this bright and windy place, which smelled so pleasantly
of warm grass, nothing except a low marble bench without back or
carving. No trees nor any bushes grew here: nothing veiled this place
from the sun. Upon this sunlit mountain-top was only the bench, and
upon the bench sat Melior, waiting.
She waited—there was the miracle,—for Florian de Puysange.
Behind and somewhat below Florian were the turrets and banners of
Brunbelois, a place now disenchanted, but a fair place wherein the
old time yet lingered. Before him the bare hillside sank sheer and
unbroken, to the far-off tree-tops of Acaire: and beyond leagues of
foliage you could even see, not a great number of miles away, but quite
two miles below you, the open country of Poictesme, which you saw not
as anything real and tangible but as a hazed blending of purples and
of all the shades that green may have in heaven. Florian seemed to
stand at the top of the world: and with him, high as his heart, stood
Melior....
And it was a queer thing that he, who always noticed people’s clothes,
and who tended to be very critical about apparel, could never
afterward, in thinking about this extraordinary morning, recollect one
color which Melior wore. He remembered only a sense of many interwoven
brilliancies, as if the brightness of the summer sea and of the clouds
of sunset and of all the stars were blended here to veil this woman’s
body. She went appareled with the splendor of a queen of the old days,
she who was the most beautiful of women that have lived in any day.
For, if so far as went her body, one could think dazedly of analogues,
nowhere was there anything so bright and lovely as was this woman’s
countenance. And it was to the end that he might see the face of Melior
raised now to him, he knew, that Florian was born. All living had been
the prologue to this instant: God had made the world in order that
Florian might stand here, with Melior, at the top of the world.
And it seemed to Florian that his indiscretions in the way of removing
people from this dear world, and of excursions into strange beds, and
of failures to attend mass regularly, had become alienate to the man
who waited before Melior. All that was over and done with: he had
climbed past all that in his ascent to this bright and windy place.
Here, in this inconceivably high place, was the loveliness seen once
and never forgotten utterly, the loveliness which had made seem very
cheap and futile the things that other men wanted. Now this loveliness
was, for the asking, his: and Florian found his composure almost
shaken, he suspected that the bearing suitable to a Duke of Puysange
was touched with unbecoming ardors. He feared that logic could not
climb so high as he had climbed.
Besides, it might be, he had climbed too near to heaven. For nothing
veiled this unimaginably high place: God, seeing him thus plainly,
would be envious. That was the thought which Florian put hastily out of
mind....
He parted his lips once or twice. This was, he joyously reflected,
quite ridiculous. A woman waited: and Florian de Puysange could not
speak. Then words came, with a sort of sobbing.
“My princess, there was a child who viewed you once in your long
sleeping. The child’s heart moved with desires which did not know their
aim. It is not that child who comes to you.”
“No, but a very gallant champion,” she replied, “to whom we all owe our
lives.”
He had raised a deprecating hand. It was trembling. And her face seemed
only a blurred shining, for in his eyes were tears. It must be, Florian
reflected, because of the wind: but he did not believe this, nor need
we.
“Princess, will you entrust to me, such as I am, the life I have
repurchased for you? I dare make no large promises, in the teeth of a
disastrously tenacious memory. Yet, there is no part in me but worships
you, I have no desire in life save toward you. There has never been in
all my life any real desire save that which strove toward you.”
“Oh, but, Messire Florian,” the girl replied, “of course I will be your
wife if you desire it.”
He raised now both his hands a little toward her. She had not drawn
back. He did not know whether this was joy or terror which possessed
him: but it possessed him utterly. His heart was shaking in him, with
an insane and ruthless pounding. He thought his head kept time to this
pounding, and was joggling like the head of a palsied old man. He knew
his finger-tips to be visited by tiny and inexplicable vibrations.
“If I could die now—!” was in his mind. “Now, at this instant! And what
a thought for me to be having now!”
Instead, he now touched his disenchanted princess. Yet their two bodies
seemed not to touch, and not to have moved as flesh that is pulled by
muscles. They seemed to have merged, effortlessly and without volition,
into one body.
In fine, he kissed her. So was the affair concluded.
_9._
_Misgivings of a Beginning Saint_
What Florian remembered, afterward, about Brunbelois seemed rather
inconsequential. It was, to begin with, a high place, a remarkably high
place. In the heart of the Forest of Acaire, arose a mountain with
three peaks, of which the middle and lowest was cleared ground. Here
stood the castle of Brunbelois, beside a lake, a lake that was fed by
springs from the bottom, and had no tributaries and no outlet. Forests
thus rose about you everywhere except in the west, where you looked
down and yet further down, over the descending tree-tops of Acaire, and
could see beyond these the open country of Poictesme.