Figures of Earth
by
James Branch Cabell

Part 1 out of 5

FIGURES OF EARTH

A Comedy of Appearances

JAMES BRANCH CABELL

Illustrated by Frank C. Pape

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. Pape'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 role 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
ete en realite Manuel et Siegfried, Achille et Rustem? Par quels
exploits ont-ils merite l'eternelle admiration que leur ont vouee les
hommes de leur race? Nul ne repondra jamais a ces questions.... Mais
Poictesme croit a la realite 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 reelle d'ailleurs, car elle est l'image purifiee de la race
qui l'a produite, et, si on peut s'exprimer ainsi, l'incarnation de son
genie."

--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
Gisele 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 Gisele 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 Gisele 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 Gisele.

"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 Leshy that a magician cannot surrender his prey unless the
magician be conquered. I must tell you, too, that when I carried off
Gisele I acted, as I by and by discovered, rather injudiciously."

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

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

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

The prince of the seven madnesses said gravely:

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

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

Miramon sighed. He said:

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

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

Then said Miramon:

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly that is true," says Niafer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]

V

The Eternal Ambuscade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What would be your desire?"

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]

VI

Economics of Math

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

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

"I have cause, and cause to spare."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But, Sister, she is a princess!"

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

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

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

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

Then Manuel put on his Sunday clothes.

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

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

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

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

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

Manuel said, "Yes."

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

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

"Now you talk stuff and nonsense--"

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

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

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

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

VII

The Crown of Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But young Manuel replied sturdily:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIII

The Halo of Holiness

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

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

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

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

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

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Figures of EarthbyJames Branch Cabell

Part 1 out of 5

Figures of Earth
by
James Branch Cabell