by the nose in everything by that wife of his.”
Then Jurgen’s shoulders went up, his hands went outward, to disclaim any
personal share in the old lady’s appraisement of his present client
Radegonde. But Jurgen did not argue the matter.
“Madame Melicent,” Jurgen equably resumed, “has been the provoker of
much gratifyingly destructive warfare oversea, just as Madame Ettarre
has been the cause of another long war here at home, in which many
gentlemen have won large honor, and hundreds of the humbler sort have
been enabled to enter into a degree of eternal bliss appropriate to
their inferior estate. Such wars evoke the noble emotions of patriotism,
they enable people to become proficient in self-sacrifice, and they
remarkably better business conditions, as my ledgers attest. As for
Madame Dorothy, while she has incited no glorious public homicides and
arsons, she has gratified and she has made more pleasurable the
existence of half the gentry of Poictesme—”
“And what, you rogue, do you mean by that?”
“I allude to the organ of vision, without any anatomical excursus. I
mean that to behold such perfect beauty makes life more pleasurable.
Moreover, Madame Dorothy has incited a fine poem and a hungering and a
dreaming that will not die, and a laughter which derides its utterer,
too pitilessly—”
Now Jurgen’s voice had altered so that the old lady looked at him more
narrowly. Niafer had an excellent memory. She perfectly recalled the
infatuation of Jurgen’s youth, she who had no delusions about this
daughter of hers. And Niafer reflected briefly upon the incurable
romanticism of all men.
But Niafer said only, “I never heard of any such poem.”
Jurgen now completed the third of those convenient coughing spells. “I
refer to an epic which stays as yet unpublished. It is a variation upon
the Grail legend, madame, and pertains to the quest of a somewhat
different receptacle. However! In regard to the other children of Dom
Manuel,—concerning whose mothers your opinions, my adored Centurion, do
equal credit to your sturdy morality and your skill in the art of
impassioned prose,—we have Messire Raimbaut, a very notably respected
poet, we have Sesphra, who has become a god of the Philistines. Poets
befall all families, of course, with nobody to blame, whereas a god,
madame, is not ever, as rhetoricians express it, to be sneezed at. We
have, moreover, Edward Longshanks, one of the most applauded monarchs
that England has ever known, because he so compactly exhibits in his
large person every one of the general defects and limitations of his
people. Thus far, madame, we may estimate the children of Dom Manuel’s
body to have made a rather creditable showing.”
“There is something in what you say,” Dame Niafer admitted. “Yet what is
this nonsense about ‘the children of his body’? Have men any other
implement, unknown to their wives, with which to beget children?”
Jurgen beamed. Jurgen, it was apparent, had found an enticing idea to
play with.
“There is quite another sort of paternity, acquired without the need of
troubling and upsetting any woman. So, for the perfect rounding off of
our argument, we must consider also Dom Manuel’s children in the spirit,
those lords who were of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, and whose
heroism was modeled so exactly after his fine example.”
Niafer replied, a little puzzled: “They were notable and pious persons,
who were sent into all parts of the earth as the apostles of the
Redeemer, and who will return again with Manuel.... But do you tell me
just what you mean!”
“I mean that it was of rough and ungodly fighting-men that Dom Manuel’s
example made these incomparable heroes. There was a time, madame,—a time
to which we may now, in the proper spirit, refer without any
impiety,—when their delight in battle was as vigorous as their moral
principles were lax, a time when they jested at holy things, and when
their chastity was defective.”
The Countess nodded. “I remember that time. It was an evil time, with no
respectability in it: and I said so, from the first.”
“Yet do you consider what Dom Manuel’s example and teachings made, in
the end, of his companions in this life! Do you consider the saintly
deeds of Holden and of Anavalt, and how Ninzian was for so long the
mainstay of all religion hereabouts—!”
“Ninzian was a holy person, and even among the apostles of Manuel he was
perhaps the most devout. Nevertheless—”
But Jurgen now became more particular. “Do you consider how but fourteen
years ago Donander died a martyr in conflict with the pagan Northmen,
proving with his body’s loss the falsity and wickedness of their
superstitions when in the sight of both armies Donander was raised up
into heaven by seven angels in the same instant that a devil carried his
adversary northward!”
“That miracle is attested. Yet—”
“Consider how holy Gonfal also perished as a martyr among the infidels
of Inis Dahut, after his chaste resistance to the improper advances of
their queen! There, madame, was a very soul-stirring example for you,
because you brunettes are not easy to resist.”
“Get along with you, you rogue! My eyes stay dark and keen enough to see
that what hair I have is white in these days.”
“Then also, pious Miramon Lluagor, it is well known, converted many
hundreds of the heathen about Vraidex, by the great miracle which he
wrought when Koshchei the Deathless, and Toupan, the Duke of Chaos, and
Moloch, Lord of the Land of Tears, and Nergal, the Chief of Satan’s
Secret Police,—and several thousand other powers of evil whose names and
infernal degrees at this instant evade me,—came swarming out of hell in
the form of gigantic bees.”
“It is known that such favor was vouchsafed by Heaven to the faith and
the prayers of Miramon. Ninzian, indeed, was present at the time, and
told me about those awful insects. Each was about as large as a cow, but
their language was much worse. Nevertheless—”
But Jurgen was nowhere near done. “Then Guivric,” he pointed
out,—“Guivric of Perdigon, also, in whom the old leaven stayed longer
than in the others, so that for a while he kept some little faults, they
say, in the way of pride and selfishness,—Guivric got wholly rid of
these blemishes after his notable trip into the East to discomfit
single-handed the signal schisms of the pernicious and sinister Sylan.
There was never a sweeter nor a more prodigally generous nor a more
generally lovable saint upon earth than all found Guivric after his
return from exorcising that heathen heresiarch into a mere pile of
bones; and so the dear old Heitman stayed up to the glorious hour of his
seraphic death.”
“That is true. I recall the change in Guivric, and it was most
edifying.”
“Do you recall, also, madame, how the venerable Kerin went down to teach
the truth about the Redeemer in the deepest fastnesses of error and
delusion! and how he there confuted, one by one, the frivolous
scientific objections of the overseers of hell,—with a patience, a
painstakingness and a particularity surprising even in an apostle,—in an
argument which lasted twenty years!”
“That also is true. In fact, it was his own wife who told me about it.
Nevertheless—”
But Jurgen was still talking. “Lastly, madame, my beloved father Coth,
as a matter of equally general knowledge, went as an evangelist among
the brown-skinned and black-hearted unbelievers of Tollan. He introduced
among them the amenities of civilization and true religion. He taught
them to cover their savage nakedness. And, in just the manner of holy
Gonfal, Coth likewise subdued the goad of carnal desire and the prick of
his flesh—not once, but many times,—when Coth also was tempted by such
an ill-regulated princess as but to think of crimsons the cheek of
decency.”
The Countess said, meditatively: “You and your cheek—However, do you go
on!”
Jurgen now shook a grizzled head, in rather shocked deprecation. “You
ask the impossible. Upon the innumerable other pious exploits of Coth,
I, as his wholly unworthy son, may not dwell without appearing
vainglorious. That would be most unbecoming. For the modesty of my
father was such, madame, that, I must tell you, not even to me, his own
son, did he ever speak of these matters. The modesty of my father was
such that—as was lately revealed to a devout person in a vision,—even
now my father esteems himself unworthy of celestial bliss; even now his
conscience troubles him as to the peccadilloes of his earlier and
unregenerate days; and even now he elects to remain among what, in a
manner of speaking, might be termed the less comfortable conditions of
eternal life.”
“He is privileged, no doubt, to follow his own choice: for his
consecrated labors are attested. Nevertheless....”
Then for a while Dame Niafer considered. These certainly were the facts
as to the lords of the Silver Stallion, whom she herself could remember
as having been, in the far-off days of her youth, comparatively
imperfect persons: these acts of the apostles were facts recorded in the
best-thought-of chronicles, these were the facts familiar even to
children, facts which now a lengthy while ago, along with many other
edifying facts about the saintly lords of the Silver Stallion, had each
been fitted into its proper niche as a part of the great legend of
Manuel: and as she appraised these facts, the old Countess validly
perceived the strength of Jurgen’s argument....
“Yes,” Niafer conceded, by and by, “yes, what you say is true. These
consecrated persons had faults when they were first chosen by my husband
to be his companions: but through their intimacy with him, and through
the force of his example, they were purged of these faults, they were
made just and perfect: and after the Redeemer’s passing, they fared
stainlessly, and were his apostles, and carried that faith which his
living had taught them into every direction and about all quarters of
the earth. These are the facts recorded in each history book.”
“So, you perceive, Centurion dear! I can but repeat that, in the axiom
favored by my honored father, every tree must be judged by its fruits.
The exploits of the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion I estimate as the
first fruits of the cult of the Redeemer. Men of the somewhat lax
principles to which these apostles in their younger days—I say it in the
proper spirit, madame,—did now and then, we know, succumb, such men are
not unmiraculously made just and perfect. I deduce we may declare this
cult of Manuel the Redeemer to be a heavenly inspired and an in all ways
admirable cult, since it produces miraculously, from the raw material of
alloyed humanity, such apostles. This cult has already, in the holy
lives and the high endings of the lords of the Silver Stallion, madame,
passed the pragmatic test: it is a cult that works.”
“Besides,” said Niafer, with a not unfeminine ellipsis, and with a
feminine preference for something quite tangible, “there is that last
sight of my husband’s entry into glory, which as a child you had upon
Upper Morven, and the fearful eucharist which you witnessed there. I
could never understand why there was not even one angel present, when as
many as seven came for Donander. Even so, you did witness very holy and
supernatural occurrences with which Heaven would never have graced the
passing of an ordinary person.”
“The imagination of a child—” began Jurgen. He stopped short. He added,
“Very certainly, madame, your logic is acute, and your deduction is
unassailable by me.”
“At all events—” Then it was Niafer who stopped abruptly.
But in a while she continued speaking, and in her withered face was much
that puzzled and baffled look which Coth’s old face had worn toward the
end.
“At all events, it was only a dream about those hussies. And at all
events, it is near time for dinner,” said Dame Niafer. “And people must
have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go
out of it we must take what we find. That is all. I have not the
imagination of a child. I am old. And when you get old it is better not
to imagine things. It is better for an old person not to have any
dreams. It is better for an old person not to think. Only one thing is
good for an old person, and gives to that old person an end of
loneliness and of bad dreams and of too much thinking.”
Niafer arose, not without difficulty; and the bent, limping, very aged
Countess Dowager of Poictesme now went away from Jurgen, slowly and
moodily.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_70._
_All Ends Perplexedly_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
JURGEN, thus left alone, forthwith ascended the side of the great tomb.
He stood now at the top of it, holding to the neck of the horse upon
which sat the sculptured effigy of Manuel. The stone face, above and
looking beyond Jurgen, when seen at such close quarters, was blotched
and grotesquely coarse, the blank eyeballs gave it a repellent air of
crass idiocy. But Jurgen was there to appraise not the face but the
garments of the overtowering hero, and it was at the gems with which
this famous effigy was inset that Jurgen was really looking.
Then, without any deep surprise, Jurgen whistled. To his trained eye it
was apparent enough that these gems with which Madame Niafer had
prodigally adorned her husband’s statue were one and all, and had been
from the first, bright bits of variously colored glass. The Countess
Radegonde, it appeared, had been by a great many years forestalled in
her economics and in her practical view of this tomb by the countess who
builded it.
And somehow Jurgen was not much surprised. His only verbal outbreak was
to utter one of his favorite remarks. He said, “These women!”
He climbed down to the pavement afterward, with the gingerly care
befitting a person of forty-and-something. He cocked his gray head,
looking upward with a remarkable blending of the quizzical and of the
regretful. Now, seen at an appropriate distance, now Manuel of Poictesme
appeared again resplendent and in everything majestic. He sat there,
wary and confident and superb, it seemed, perpetually to guard the
country which he had redeemed; and to which, men said, he was to
return....
Thus Jurgen waited for some while, regarding the vast tomb which was
wholly empty, and which everywhere was adorned with a worthless tinsel
glitter, and which yet stayed the most holy and, precisely as Jurgen had
pointed out, the actually inspiring shrine of the heroic cult of the
Redeemer....
Jurgen opened his mouth. Then he shut it.
For Jurgen recalled that only last month he had become involved in a
somewhat perturbing experience, on account of having spoken extempore in
praise of the Devil; and so, as concerned the Redeemer, Jurgen decided
not to commit himself one way or the other. It seemed the part of wisdom
for an aging pawnbroker to keep out of all such extra-mundane
affairs.... Even so, a carnival of thoughts now tempted him to play with
them, because this was a paradoxical tomb about which, but for the
promptings of discretion, one might say a number of fine things. Those
tinsel fripperies were, to the eyes of a considerate person, worthy of a
reverence undemanded by mere diamonds, because of the deeds which they
had prompted: and this emptiness was sacred because of the faith which
people had put in it. And that this glittering vacuity could, as a
matter of fact, work miracles was now fully attested: for it had reduced
Jurgen to silence.
No: you could never, shruggingly, dismiss this tomb as, upon the
whole, a malefic fraud which emanated only folly and intolerance and a
persecution of the short-sighted by the blind. That was, in fact, a
relatively unimportant aspect, in that it was an aspect which need
never trouble you personally, if you were careful. And, at
forty-and-something, you were careful.
Meanwhile you knew the shining thing to have been, also, the begetter of
so much charity, and of forbearance, and of bravery, and of
self-denial,—and of its devotees’ so strange, so troublingly
incomprehensible, contentment,—that it somewhat frightened Jurgen. For
Jurgen, but a moment ago, had been handling—perhaps—a bit
over-intimately that really dangerous fountain-head of all the aspiring
and fine standards which the aging pawnbroker was used unfeignedly to
admire, with a vague, ever-present underthought as to the disastrousness
of acquiring them. It would, he felt, be the very deuce if in business
life one were ever to find these notions on the wrong side of his
counter....
Esthetically it was, of course, delightful to regard the preëminent
manifesters of the Redeemer’s power and sanctity, in those splendid
lords of the Silver Stallion about whom Jurgen had but now been talking.
It was an ennobling and a picturesque reflection that humanity had once
risen to such heights; that mere mortal men had, through their faith in
and their contact with the great Redeemer, become purged of all faults
and carnal weaknesses, and had lived stainlessly, and had even performed
their salutary miracles whenever such a course seemed requisite. Jurgen
thought it would be rather fun to work miracles. In any event, it was
pleasant, and it was non-committally uplifting, just to think about the
heroic saints of yesterday, and to envy their lot in life and their
assured fine place in history.
Jurgen thought, for example, of gentle and great-hearted old Guivric
sharing his worldly wealth in such noble irrationality with all needy
persons; and of kneeling Miramon with those seven thousand horrific bees
swarming about him,—screeching out infernal threats, but powerless to
trouble the serene, psalm-singing and unstung saint. Jurgen thought of
Kerin facing so intrepidly yet other hideous cohorts of disputatious
fiends and cowing their science so-called with decisive Biblical texts;
and of the noble shocked figure of virtuous Gonfal holding fast his
nightgown about him with one hand, and with the other repulsing the
enamored—and, they said, quite good-looking also,—Queen Morvyth of the
Isles of Wonder, when she assaulted his chastity. Performances like
these were well worthy to be commemorated in history: and Jurgen
regarded them with a warm, gratifying thrill of purely esthetic
appreciation.
For, from any practical standpoint, Jurgen obscurely felt, it would be
inconvenient to be quite as perfect and superb as all that. Or, you
might put it better, perhaps, that this was not a condition which a
really honorable person, with a shop and a wife and other obligations,
could conscientiously do anything directly to provoke for himself. Any,
as one might say, defenseless householder whom the all-powerful Redeemer
had explicitly and unarguably singled out to live in the heroic sanctity
of an apostle would be, of course, in quite another and wholly
justifiable case....
And Jurgen was wondering what it was that the child who Jurgen once had
been had, actually, witnessed and heard upon Upper Morven. He could not
now be certain: the fancies of a child are so unaccountable, so opulent
in decorative additions.... Yet the testimony of that child appeared to
have done more than anything else toward establishing Dom Manuel’s
supremacy over all the men that Poictesme had ever known; indeed, when
every fostering influence was allowed for, the whole cult of the
returning Redeemer had begun with the testimony of that child. And
perhaps it was natural enough (in this truly curious world) that Jurgen
nowadays should be the only person remaining in any place who was a bit
dubious as to the testimony of that child....
Anyhow, young Jurgen had brought down from Morven a most helpful and
inspiring prediction which kept up people’s spirits in this truly
curious world; and cheerfulness was a clear gain. The fact that nothing
anywhere entitled you to it could only, he deduced, make of this
cheerfulness a still clearer gain....
There might, besides, very well have been something to build upon.
Modesty, indeed, here raised the point if Jurgen—at that tender age and
some while before the full ripening of his powers,—could have invented
out of the whole cloth anything quite so splendid and far-reaching? And
that question he modestly left unanswered. Meanwhile (among so many
perplexities) it was certain that Poictesme, along with the rest of
Christendom, had now its wholly satisfactory faith and its beneficent
legend.
EXPLICIT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMPENDIUM OF LEADING HISTORICAL EVENTS
(_Abridged from the computations of Bülg_)
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
1239 Manuel the Redeemer departs from Poictesme, in the
September of this year. Last siege of the Fellowship
of the Silver Stallion held upon the feast of St.
Clement the Roman. Niafer named regent in her
husband’s stead, pending either the return of Dom
Manuel or the arrival of the twenty-first birthday of
their son Emmerick.
1240 Gonfal goes into the Isles of Wonder. Coth travels to
Sorcha, and thence westward. Kerin disappears in the
May of this year. Miramon Lluagor leaves Poictesme.
1243 Execution of Gonfal, on or about the feast day of
Tiburtius and Valerianus.
1244 Miraculous birth of Fauxpas de Nointel.
1245 Miramon Lluagor acquires, but gets inadequate benefit
from, the bees of Toupan. Coth imprisoned at Ran
Reigan.
1247 Coth reaches Porutsa, and is made Emperor of Tollan.
Coth is blown back into Poictesme.
1250 Death of Miramon Lluagor. Flight of Demetrios the
parricide into Anatolia.
1252 St. Ferdinand enters into eternal life. Anavalt goes
into Elfhame, and perishes there.
1253 Ork and Horrig suffer martyrdom among the Peohtes.
1254 Marriage of Dom Manuel’s reputed son, Prince Edward, at
fifteen years of age, to the infant daughter of St.
Ferdinand.
1255 Mélusine puts a magic upon King Helmas, and transfers
his court to the high place at Brunbelois. Betrothal
of Melicent to King Theodoret.
1256 Perion de la Forêt comes, in disguise, to Bellegarde.
Jurgen goes into Gâtinais. Dorothy marries Michael,
the son of Guivric.
1257 Melicent escapes out of Poictesme, and is purchased by
Demetrios. Jurgen makes merry with the third wife of
the Vidame de Soyecourt.
1258 Ending of Dame Niafer’s regency in the name of Manuel;
with the formal accession, in the June of this year,
upon the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul, of
Count Emmerick the Fourth.
1260 The portrait of Queen Radegonde becomes a mortal woman,
and terminates the intimacy with Holden which began
at Lacre Kai in 1237. Count Emmerick marries
Radegonde. Death of Holden. Death of Azra.
1261 Guivric goes east to face the Sylan. Coth dies in his
sleep. Kerin returns into Poictesme after twenty-one
years spent underground.
1262 Birth of Emmerick’s first son. Ninzian detected by his
nine hundred and eightieth wife, and is visited by
Lucifer.
1263 Rape of Ettarre, with her prompt rescue by Guiron.
Maugis d’Aigremont goes into rebellion. Donander
leaves Poictesme, and is killed by Palnatoki.
1265 Kerin murdered by outlaws. Continuation of Maugis’
rebellion.
1268 Death of Pope Clement the Fourth, with the resultant
accession, in December, of Ayrart de Montors. Jurgen
visits the Château de Puysange, and there meets the
Vicomte’s wife.
1269 Birth of Florian de Puysange.
1270 Holmendis leaves Poictesme, and dies in Africa.
Edifying decease of Guivric. Jurgen returns into
Poictesme, and marries Lisa, the daughter by courtesy
of old Pettipas the pawnbroker. Count Emmerick at
odds with the Pope.
1271 Accession to the papal chair of Gregory the Tenth.
Continuation of Maugis’ disastrous rebellion, with
the partial burning of Bellegarde.
1272 Death of Balthis. Disappearance of Ninzian. Accession
of Dom Manuel’s reputed son to the crown of England.
1275 Perion and Melicent come back into Poictesme. End of
Maugis’ rebellion, with his just punishment by death.
Marriage of Ettarre to Guiron des Rocques, who in the
following year succeeds his brother, as Prince de
Gâtinais.