Chapter VII: Book FIVE: “mundus Vult Decipi”

“_Not only in this world, but also in that which is to come._”
—EPHESIANS, i, 21.

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_27._
_Poictesme Reformed_

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NOW the tale, for one reason and another, does not record the miracle which Yaotl performed. The Gods of Tollan were always apt to be misled by their queer notions of humor. Instead, the tale is of that Poictesme to which—borne by that favorable if malodorous wind which Yaotl provided and aimed,—Coth now perforce returned alone.

During the years of Coth’s absence there had been many changes. Nominally it was the Countess Niafer who ruled over this land, but she in everything seemed to be controlled by St. Holmendis of Philistia. About the intimacy between the Countess and her lean but sturdy adviser there was now no longer any gossip nor shrugging: people had grown used to this alliance, just as they were becoming reconciled to the reforms and the prohibitions which were its fruitage.

For now that Manuel was gone, Coth found, the times were changing for the better at a most uncomfortable rate. To Coth of the Rocks these days seemed to breed littler men, who, to be sure, if you cared about such kickshaws, lived more decorously than had lived their fathers, now that this overbearing St. Holmendis had come out of Philistia with his miracles: for this sacrosanct person would put up with no irregularity anywhere, and would hardly so much as tolerate the mildest form of wonder-working by anybody else. Even Guivric the Sage, who in the elder and more candid times had attended to all of Dom Manuel’s conjuring, now found it expedient to restrict his thaumaturgies to a wholly confidential practice.

For the rest, you could go for days now without encountering a warlock or a fairy; the people of Audela but rarely came out of the fire to make sport for and with mankind; and, while many persons furtively brewed spells at home, all traffic with spirits had to be conducted secretly. In fine, Poictesme was everywhere upon its most sedate behavior, because there was no telling when Holy Holmendis might be dealing with you for your own good; and the cowed province, just as Guivric had prophesied, stayed subject nowadays to a robustious saint conceived and nurtured and made holy in Philistia.

But yet another unsettling influence was abroad, nefariously laboring to keep everybody sanctimonious and genteel,—Coth said,—for over the entire land Coth found, and fretted under, the all-enveloping legend of Manuel the Redeemer. Coth found the land’s most holy place, now, to be that magnificent tomb which, in Coth’s absence, the Countess Niafer had reared at Storisende to the memory of her husband. And that this architectural perjury was handsome enough, even Coth admitted.

The intricately carved lower half of the sepulchre displayed eight alcoves in each of which was sealed the relic of one or another saint. The upper portion was the pedestal of a very fine equestrian statue of Dom Manuel with his lance raised, and in full armor, but wearing no helmet, so that the hero’s face was visible as he sat there, waiting, it seemed, and watching the North. Thus Manuel appeared to keep eternal guard against whatever enemy might dare molest the country which he had once redeemed from the Northmen. And there was never a more splendid looking champion than was this mimic Manuel, for the armor of this effigy was everywhere inset with jewels of every kind and color.

How Madame Niafer, who was, moreover, by ordinary a notably parsimonious person, had ever managed to pay for all these gems nobody could declare with certainty, but it was believed that Holy Holmendis had provided them through one or another pious miracle. Coth of the Rocks voiced an exasperated aspersion that they were paste; and declared paste gems to be wholly appropriate to the mortuary imposture. In any event, the Redeemer of Poictesme had been accorded the most magnificent sepulchre these parts had ever known.

And Coth found all this jewelry and tortured stone-work, as a work of art, to be wholly admirable, if you cared for such kickshaws. But as a tomb he considered it to lack at least one essential feature, in that it was empty.

Yet to most persons the emptiness of the great tomb was its peculiar sanctity. This spacious and proud glittering void was, to most persons, a perpetual reminder that Dom Manuel had ascended into heaven while yet alive, uncorrupted by the ignominy of death, and taking with him every heroic bone and bit of flesh, and every tiniest sinew, unmarred. That miracle—no more, to be sure, than the great Redeemer’s just due—most satisfactorily and most awfully accounted for the lack of any corpse, as surely as the lack of a corpse was the firm proof of the miracle; sublime verities here interlocked: and that miracle had been set above cavil when it was first revealed, by Heaven’s wisdom, through the unsullied innocence of a little child, lest in this world, men and women being what they are, by any scoffer the testimony of an adult evangelist might be suspected.

Coth, after hearing these axioms,—so unshakably established as axioms during the seven years of Coth’s absence,—would look meditatively at his young Jurgen, to whose extreme youth and comparative innocence this revelation had been accorded. The boy was now nearing manhood, he fell short in many respects of the virtues appropriate to an evangelist, and he confessed to remembering very faintly now that tremendous experience of his infancy. That hardly mattered, though, Coth would reflect, when Poictesme at large was so industriously preserving and embroidering the tale which the dear brat had brought down from Upper Morven to explain away an over-night truancy from home.

“There is but one Manuel,” Coth would remark, to himself, “and—of all persons!—my Jurgen is his prophet. That kickshaw creed seems to content everybody, now that the rogue no longer bothers to provide an excuse for staying out all night.”

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_28._
_Fond Motto of a Patriot_

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EVERYWHERE, indeed, during the while of Coth’s vain adventuring after the real Manuel, the legend had grown steadily. Coth found it wholly maddening to hear of the infallible and perfect Redeemer with whom he had formerly lived in daily converse of a painstakingly quarrelsome and uncivil nature: and he found too that, of his confrères of the Silver Stallion who yet remained in Poictesme, Ninzian and Donander at least were beginning to lie about Manuel with as pious a lack of restraint as anybody. Guivric the Sage, of course, would chillily assent to whatsoever the best-thought-of people affirmed, because the self-centered old knave did not ever really bother about what other persons thought: whereas Holden and Anavalt sought, rather markedly, to turn the conversation to other topics. These aging champions had, in fine, encountered, in this legend as to their former glories and privileges, an unconquerable adversary with which they, each according to his nature, were of necessity compromising.

For Manuel the great Redeemer, who had first carnally redeemed Poictesme in battle with the Northmen, and later had redeemed Poictesme in more exalted fields, when at his passing he had taken all his people’s sins upon his proud gray head,—this Manuel was to return and was to bring again with him the golden age which, everybody now asserted, had existed under Manuel’s ruling of Poictesme. That was the sweet and reason-drugging allure of the legend, that was the prediction transmitted by Coth’s young scapegrace, who nowadays had averted so whole-heartedly from prophecy to petticoats. There was no sense in arguing against such vaticinatory fanfaronade, since it promised to all inefficient persons that which they preferred to believe in. Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain by electing for peculiarity among one’s fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.

Even Coth saw that. So the bald realist looked over his cellar and the later produce among his vassals in the way of likely girls; he gave such orders as seemed best in the light of both inspections; and he settled down as comfortably as might be to the task of making old bones in this land of madmen. He might at least look forward to the requisite creature comforts to be derived from these bins and amiable spry bedfellows. His Azra was no more trying than most wives; and his young Jurgen, after all, might turn out better than seemed probable.

So Coth in the end let maudlin imbeciles proclaim whatsoever they elected about the glorious stay upon earth and the second coming of Manuel the Redeemer, and Coth answered them at worst with inarticulate growlings. But that the old bear’s love for Poictesme remained unchanged was evinced by the zeal with which he now caused his two homes superabundantly to be adorned with the arms of Poictesme, so that at every turn your eye fell upon the rampant silver stallion and the land’s famous motto, _Mundus vult decipi_. Such patriotism showed, said everybody, that, for all his fault-finding, Coth’s heart was in the right place.

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_29._
_The Grumbler’s Progress_

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AND the tale is still of Coth, telling how he avoided Niafer’s court, and the decorums and the pieties which were in fashion there, and how he debauched reasonably in his own citadels.

He fought no more, but he did not lack for other pleasures. He hunted in the Forest of Acaire; and, in his rich coat of fox fur, he rode frequently with hounds and falcons about the plains of the Roigne. He maintained an excellent pit in which wild boars and bears contended and killed one another for his diversion. When the weather was warm he drank, and he amused himself at dice and backgammon in his well-ordered orchard: in winter he sat snug under the carved hood of his huge fireplace; and it was thus that for his health’s sake he was cozily cupped and bled, while the Alderman of St. Didol drank quietly and insatiably.

Then, too, it amused Coth now and then to execute a vassal or so upon his handsome gallows,—that notorious gallows supported with four posts, although his rank as Alderman entitled him to only two posts,—because this bit of arrogance, in the matter of those two extra posts, was a continuous great source of anger to his nominal sovereign, Madame Niafer. But his main recreation, after all, Coth found in emulating those very ancient and most famous monarchs Jupiter and David in a constant change of women; and the fine girls of Poictesme remained as always a lively joy to him.

And daily, too, the Alderman of St. Didol squabbled with his wife and son; and, since he could discover profuse grounds everywhere for fault-finding, was comfortable enough.

To his sardonic bent it was at this period amusing to note how staidly Poictesme thrived by virtue of the land’s faith in Poictesme’s Redeemer, who had removed all troubles and obligations in the past, and who by and by would be coming again, no doubt to wipe similarly clean the moral slate; so that there was no real need to worry about the future, nor about any little personal misdemeanor (which had not become embarrassingly public), since this would of course be included in the general amnesty when Manuel returned to take charge of his people’s affairs.

And yet there was another and more troubling side. The younger, here and there, were beginning, within moderation, to emulate that Manuel who had never lived. For Coth saw that too. He saw young persons—here and there,—displaying traits and customs strange if not virtually unknown to the old reprobate’s varied experience. Civility, for one thing, was rather sickeningly pandemic: you saw fine strapping lads, differing in opinion about this, that or the other, who, instead of resorting sensibly to a duel, stopped—who positively sat down side by side—to examine each the other’s point of view, and after that, as often as not, talked themselves out of fighting at all. That was because of the fame of Manuel’s uniform civility, which, indeed, the rogue had displayed, and had made excellent profit of.

But you saw, too, people pardoning and even befriending persons who had affronted or injured them, and doing this because of the fame of Manuel’s loving kindliness toward his fellows: everywhere you saw that wholly groundless notion flowering also into a squeamishness about taking any other person’s property away from him, even when you really wanted it. You saw bodily sound young men avoiding, or at any rate stinting, the normal pleasures of youth, alike among their peers and in bed, because of the famousness of Dom Manuel’s sobriety and chastity: and you saw milksops, in fine, giving up all the really intelligent vices because of that slanderous rumor about Manuel’s addiction to the virtues.

It was not, either—not altogether,—that the young fools thought they had much to gain by these eccentricities. They had, somehow, been tempted into emulation by this nonsense about Manuel’s virtues. And then they had—still somehow, still quite unexplainably,—found pleasure in it. Coth granted this rather forlornly: these young people were getting a calm and temperate, but a positive, gratification out of being virtuous. There must, then, lurk somewhere deep hidden in humanity a certain trend to perverse delight in thus denying and curbing its own human appetites. And since the comparatively intelligent and unregenerate persons were all profiting by their fellows’ increased forbearance, altogether everybody was reaping benefit.

This damnable new generation was, because of its insane aspiring, happier than its fathers had been under the reign of candor and common-sense. This moonstruck legend of Manuel was bringing, not to be sure any omnipresent and unendurable perfection, but an undeniable increase of tranquillity and contentment to all Poictesme. Coth saw that too.

He remembered what his true liege-lord had said to him in the Place of the Dead: and Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about.

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_30._
_Havoc of Bad Habits_

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NEWS as to court affairs and the rest of the province came now to Coth, in his two lairs at Haut Belpaysage, belatedly and rarely. Yet at this time he heard that Anavalt the Courteous had gone out of Poictesme with as little warning as the other lords of the Silver Stallion had accorded their intimates when Gonfal and Kerin and Miramon, and Coth himself, had each gone out of the land after Manuel’s passing.

These overnight evasions appeared to be becoming a habit, Coth said to his wife Azra, so you had best cherish me in the night season while you may, instead of shrieking out nonsense about my hands being so cold. She replied with an uxorial generality as to sore-headed bears and snapping-turtles and porcupines, which really was not misplaced. And it was not for a long while that any tidings were had of Anavalt the Courteous, and the riddle of his evasion was unraveled,[1] but at the last the news came as to the end which Anavalt had found near a windmill in the Wood of Elfhame, in his courtship of the mistress of that sinister and superficial forest.

Footnote 1:

Among other places, in a volume called _Straws and Prayer-Books_.

“At his age, too! and with a woman too thin to keep him warm!” said Coth. “It simply shows you, my dear son, what comes of lecherous habits, and I trust you may profit by it, for the world is very full of such deceits.”

And Coth, for his Jurgen’s benefit, piously indicated the motto which you encountered at well-nigh every turn in Coth’s two homes, along with the stallion rampant in every member.

Nevertheless, Coth was unhappier than he showed. He had loved Anavalt in the days when these two had served together under the banner of the Silver Stallion. It seemed to Coth that in dark Elfhame a handsome and fine-spoken and kindly rascal had been trapped and devoured rather wastefully. Nor was it cheering to consider that, now, but five of the great fellowship remained alive.... Meanwhile, in rearing a son judiciously, one must preserve the proper moral tone.

And Coth heard also, at about this time, of the magic which had been put upon King Helmas the Deep-Minded, that monarch whom, as people said, Dom Manuel in the old days had bamboozled into giving Manuel a fine start in life. Coth heard of how this magic had been put upon Helmas by his own daughter Mélusine, and of the notable transfer of the king’s castle and person and entire entourage from out of Albania to the high place at Brunbelois, in the impenetrable Forest of Acaire, where the ill-fated court of Helmas now all stayed enchanted, people said.

And Coth drew the moral. “It shows you what parents may expect of their children,” he remarked, with a malevolent glance toward his adored Jurgen. “It shows you what comes of this habit of indulging children.”

“Now, Father—” said the boy.

“Stop storming at me! How dare you attempt to bulldoze me, sir! Do you take me for another Helmas!”

“But, Father—”

“Get out of my sight, you quarrelsome puppy! I will not be thus deafened. Get back to that Dorothy of yours! You care for nobody else,” said jealous old Coth.

“Now, Father—”

“And must you still be arguing with me! Do you think there is no end to my patience? What is there to argue about? The puppy follows the bitch. That is natural.”

“But, Father, how can you—!”

“Get out of my sight before I break every bone in your body! Get back to that cold sanctimonious court and to your hot wench!” said Coth.

Yet all the while that he spoke with such fluency Coth’s heart was troubled. Of course, in rearing a son judiciously, one must preserve the proper moral tone. Nevertheless, Coth felt, at heart, that he might be taking the wrong way with the boy, and was being almost brusque.

But Coth was Coth. That was his doom. He had only one way.

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_31._
_Other Paternal Apothegms_

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NOW Jurgen went very often to court, since the boy at twenty-one was fathoms deep in love with Count Manuel’s second daughter, whom they called Dorothy la Désirée. Coth saw her but once: and, even over and above his rage at the thought of sharing Jurgen with anybody, Coth was honestly moved, in the light of his considerable boudoir experience, to uncivil prophecy. He was upon this occasion, in the main hall at Bellegarde, with dozens of persons within earshot, most embarrassingly explicit with Jurgen, alike as to the quality of Jurgen’s intelligence and the profession which Coth desired no daughter-in-law of his to practice.

The two quarreled. That nowadays was no novelty. The difference was that into this quarrel Jurgen put all his heart. So the insolent, overbearing, bulldozing young scoundrel was packed off to serve under the Vidame de Soyecourt: and before the year was out Coth heard that this Dorothy la Désirée was married to Guivric’s son Michael.

“This Michael is but the first served at an entertainment preparing for the general public,” was Coth’s epithalamium.

And many rumors came back to Haut Belpaysage as to Jurgen’s doings in Gâtinais, and, while they all seemed harmless enough, not all were precisely what a father would have elected to hear. Coth considered, for example, that Jurgen had acted with imprudence in thus hastily making Coth a grandfather with the assistance of the third wife of the Vidame de Soyecourt. Husbands had a sad way of being provoked by such offspring, upon the wholly illogical ground that the provocation was not mutual. Still, young people needed their diversions, and husbands, to Coth’s experience, were not a dangerous tribe. What really fretted a somewhat aging Alderman, however, was that such stories reached him casually, and that from Jurgen himself he heard nothing.

Yet other gossip came too from the court at Bellegarde and Storisende, as to how Manuel’s oldest daughter, Madame Melicent, was now betrothed to King Theodoret, and how upon the eve of her marriage she had disappeared out of Poictesme: and she was next heard of as living in unchristian splendor far oversea, as—if you elected to put it more gracefully than Coth did,—the wife of Miramon Lluagor’s son and murderer, Demetrios.

“Why not?” said Coth. “Why should not snub-nosed Miramon’s swarthy lad be having his wenches when convenient? Parricide is no bar to fornication. They are sins committed with quite different weapons. And, for the rest, all sons are intent to do what this one has succeeded in doing. How, for that matter, did Dom Manuel, that famous Redeemer of yours, deal with his own father Oriander the Swimmer?”

That, it was hastily explained to him by his wife Azra, was but a part of the great Redeemer’s abnegation and self-denial. That was the atonement, and the immolation of his only beloved father, in order to expiate the gross sins of Poictesme—

“To expiate the sins of one person by killing another person,” replied Coth, “is not an atonement. It is nonsense.”

Well, but, it was furthermore explained, this atonement was a great and holy mystery; and, as such, it should be approached with reverence rather than mere rationality. Yet this high mystery of the atonement must undoubtedly symbolize the fact that, in order to attain perfection, Manuel had put off the ties of his flesh—

To which Coth answered, staring moodily at his wife Azra: “I saw that fight. He put off those ties of his flesh, and Oriander’s head from his body, with such pleasure as Manuel showed in no other combat. And all sons are like him. Have we not a son? Why do you keep pestering me?”

“I only meant—”

“Stop contradicting me!” But very swiftly Coth added, with a sort of gulp, “—my dear.”

For Coth was changing. He hunted no more, he had closed up his bear-pit. He seemed to prefer to be alone. Azra would very often find him huddled in his chair, not doing anything, but merely thinking: and then he would glare at her ferociously, without speaking; and she would go away from him, without speaking, because she also thought too frequently about their son for her own comfort.

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_32._
_Time Gnaws at All_

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THEN Emmerick came of age, and Madame Niafer’s rule was over, men said, because the Count would be swayed in all things by his cousin, the Bishop Ayrart of Montors, the same that afterward was Pope.

“The young church rat drives out the old one,” said Coth. “Now limping Niafer must learn to do without a night-light and to sleep without a halo on her pillow.”

But Ayrart’s supremacy was not for long, and Holy Holmendis remained about the court, after all, because, at just this time, lean Holden the Brave appeared at Storisende with a beautiful young gray-eyed stranger whom he introduced as the widow of Elphànor, King of Kings. People felt that for this Radegonde thus to be surviving her husband by more than thirteen centuries was a matter meritorious of explanation, but neither she nor Holden offered any.

The history of the love which had been between Radegonde and Holden is related elsewhere[2]: at this time it remained untold. But now, at this love’s ending, Radegonde found favor in the small greedy eyes of Count Emmerick, and she married him, nor was there ever at any season thereafter during the lifetime of Radegonde a question as to what person, howsoever flightily, ruled over Poictesme and Emmerick. And Radegonde—after a very prettily worded but frank proviso as to the divine right of princes, which rendered them and their wives responsible to Heaven directly, and to nobody else, as she felt sure dear Messire Holmendis quite understood,—Radegonde thereafter favored Holmendis and his wonder-working reforms, among the appropriate class of people, because she considered that his halo was distinctly decorative, and that a practicing saint about the court lent it, as she phrased the matter, an air.

Footnote 2:

See note upon page 145.

Coth heard of these things; and he nodded his great dome-shaped head complacently enough. “A tree may be judged by its fruit. Now in England Dom Manuel’s long-legged bastard by Queen Alianora has returned his young wife to the nursery. He is to-day, they tell me,—in the approved fashion of all sons,—junketing about foreign courts with the Lord of Bulmer’s daughter. He, in brief, while the Barons steal England from him, is intent upon begetting his own bastards—”

“But you also, my husband—”

“Do you stop deafening me with your talk about irrelevant matters! In Philistia, Dom Manuel’s most precious bantling by Queen Freydis is working every manner of pagan iniquity, and has brought about the imprisonment, in infamous Antan, of his own mother, after having lived with her for some while in incest—”

“Nevertheless—”

“Azra, you have, as I tell you for your own good, a sad habit, and a very ill-bred habit also, of interrupting people, and that habit is quite insufferable. A tree, I repeat to you, may be judged by its fruit! Everybody knows that. Now, in our Poictesme, the increase of Dom Manuel’s body has, thus far, produced two strumpets and a guzzling cuckold—”

“But, even so—”

“You are talking nonsense. A tree, I say to you, may be judged by its fruit! I consider this exhibit very eloquently convincing as to the true nature of our Redeemer.”

Azra now answered nothing. And Coth fell to looking at his motto, rather gloomily.

“It was not that I meant,” he said, heroically, by and by, “to be rude, my dear. But I do hate a fool, and, in particular, an obstinate fool.”

Here too it must be recorded that upon the night of Radegonde’s marriage old Holden had the ill taste to die. That it was by his own hand, nobody questioned, but the affair was hushed up: and Count Emmerick’s married life thus started with gratifyingly less scandal than it culminated in.

Coth heard of this thing also. He looked at his motto, he recalled the love which he had borne for Holden in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody: and he mildly wondered that Holden, at his age, should still be clinging to the fallacy that one wench was much more desirable than another. By and large, thought Coth, they had but one use, for which any one of them would serve, if you still cared for such kickshaws. For himself, he was growing abstemious; and as often as not, found it rather a nuisance when any of his vassals married, and the Alderman of St. Didol was expected to do his seignorial duty by the new made wife. Things everywhere were dwindling and deteriorating.

Even the great Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was wearing away, thus steadily, under the malice and greed of time. Donander of Évre was to-day the only one of Manuel’s barons who yet rode about the world, now and then, in search of good fighting and fine women. All the best of the fellowship were gone from life: the hypocrites and the fools alone remained, Coth estimated modestly. For he and that boy Donander were, at least, not hypocrites....

And very often, too, Coth would look at his wife Azra, and would remember the girl that she had been in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody. He rather liked her now. It was a felt loss that she no longer had the spirit to quarrel with anything like the fervor of their happier days: not for two years or more had Azra flung a really rousing taunt or even a dinner plate in his direction: and Coth pitied the poor woman’s folly in for an instant bothering about that young scoundrel of a Jurgen, who had set up as a poet, they said, and—in the company, one heard, of a grand duchess,—was rampaging everywhither about Italy, with never a word for his parents. Coth, now, did not worry over such ingratitude at all: not less than twenty times a day he pointed out to his wife that he, for one, never wasted a thought upon the lecherous runagate.

His wife would smile at him, sadly: and after old Coth had been particularly abusive of Jurgen, she would, without speaking, stroke her husband’s knotted, stubby, splotched hand, or his tense and just not withdrawing cheek, or she would tender one or another utterly uncalled-for caress, quite as though this illogical and broken-spirited creature thought Coth to be in some sort of trouble. The woman, though, had never understood him....

Then Azra died. Coth was thus left alone. It seemed to him a strange thing that the Coth who had once been a fearless champion and a crowned emperor and a contender upon equal terms with the High Gods, should be locked up in this quiet room, weeping like a small, punished, frightened child.

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_33._
_Economics of Coth_

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IN the months that followed, Coth wore a puzzled and baffled look. His servants reported that he talked to himself almost incessantly. But it was incoherent, uncharacteristic stuff, without any quarreling in it, they said.... Coth at the last had well-nigh given over fault-finding. He was merely puzzled.

For life, somehow, in some as yet undetected fashion, seemed to have cheated him. It was not possible that, with fair play everywhere, life would be affording you, as the sum and harvest of all, no more than this. No sort of pleasure remained: girls left, and for that matter found, you wholly frigid; wine set you to vomiting. You wanted, as if in a cold cemetery of desires, one thing alone, nowadays.

Yet the son Jurgen whom Coth’s tough heart remembered and desired was still frolicking about the pleasant and famous places of the world, with no time to waste in sedate Poictesme: and Coth rather suspected that, even now, in this sick unimaginable loneliness, were Jurgen to return, a feebly raging Coth would storm at the lad and turn him out of doors. For that was Coth’s way. He had only one way.... He reflected, now, Jurgen was no longer a lad: it well might be, indeed, that pock-marked, greasy-headed roisterer had ended living, with some husband’s dagger in his ribs. The last news heard of Jurgen, though, was that he was making songs in Byzantium with the aid of a runaway abbess, who at least had no husband. And in any event, Jurgen would not ever return, because Coth had come between the boy that had been and the leering, high-nosed strumpet at Asch, who was reported to be rivaling even that poor Kerin’s widow, Saraïde, in the great number of her co-partners in lectual exercise.

“A pert pirate in all men’s affairs, a mere cockboat sailing under the Jolly Roger!” was Coth’s verdict, as repeated by an eavesdropping page. “This Madame Dorothy has had in her more”—he mumbled so that something was lost—“than there are trees in Acaire. All the trees in Acaire are judged by their fruits. This Dorothy is a very betraying fruit from the rank tree of the Redeemer. This Dorothy has inherited from Dom Manuel such lewdness as is advantageously suited to a warrior, but misbecomes a young woman. It seems rather a pity that this light wagtail should ever have come between me and Jurgen.”

Coth said this without any raging. He was merely puzzled.

For all, everywhere, appeared to have failed and deserted him. This Coth had been in his day a hero: and none of that far-off adventuring seemed much to matter now, nor could he quite believe that these things had happened to the tired old fellow who went muttering about the lonely Château des Roches, and was kept alive with slops of gruel and barley-water. This tremulous frail wreckage was not, assuredly, the Coth who had killed single-handed the three Turks at Lacre Kai, and who had kidnapped the fat King of Cyprus and in the sight of two armies had hung the crown of yet another king on the thorn-bush at Piaja, and who had been himself an emperor, and who had held the White Tower at Skeaf against the Comprachos, and who had put that remarkable deception upon the enamored one-legged tyrant of Ran Reigan, and who had shared in so many other splendid rough-and-tumble happenings.

There had been a host of women in these happenings, fine women, not to be had at anybody’s whistle like the tow-headed Dorothys whom these sanctimonious times were spawning everywhere to come between a father and a boy with no real harm in him. And none of these dear women mattered now.... Besides, it was not true to say that Jurgen had no real harm in him. Jurgen had been violent and headstrong from the very first: that was another pity, but Jurgen had taken after his mother in this, old Coth reflected, and his mother had always been injudicious alike in pampering and in rebuking Jurgen, with the result that Jurgen was nowadays a compendium of all iniquity.

And the Manuel too whom Coth had loved was gone now, and was utterly ousted from every person’s memory by that glittering tomb at Storisende, where a Manuel who had never lived was adored as a god is worshiped. Yet that, also, seemed not to matter. It was preposterous. But all the world was preposterous: and nothing whatever could be done about it, by a tired muttering old man.

People, no doubt, were living more quietly and more decorously because of this fictitious Manuel whom they loved and this gaunt ranting Holmendis whom they feared. But that too, to Coth, seemed not to matter. People nowadays were such fools that their doings and the upshot of these doings were equally unimportant, Coth estimated. If they succeeded in worming their way into heaven by existing here as spiritlessly as worms, Coth had not any objection, since he himself was bound for hell and for the company of his peers in a more high-hearted style of living.

Coth fell a little complacently to thinking about hell, and about the fine great sinners who would make room for him there, on account of the Coth that had been, and about the genial flames in which nobody was pestered by milksops prattling about their damned Redeemer. And Manuel—the real Manuel, that squinting swaggering gray rogue whose thefts and bastards and killings had been innumerous,—that Manuel would be there too, of course; and he and Coth would make very excellent mirth over those reforms which had ensnared all the milksops into heaven, even at the high price of spoiling the Poictesme of Coth’s youth.

For those elder heroic days were quite over. Of the great fellowship there remained, beside the hulk that was Coth, only Guivric and Donander and Ninzian. Donader of Évre was now, they said, in the far kingdom of Marabon, combining the pleasures of knight-errantry with a pious pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas. And while Coth had always admired Donander as a fighting-machine, in all other respects Coth considered him a deplorable young fool, nor, after holding this opinion steadfastly for twenty-five years, was Coth prepared to change it. Ninzian was a sleek hypocrite, a half-hearted fellow who had stinted himself to one poor pale adultery with a pawnbroker’s wife; and who flourished in the sanctimonious atmosphere of these abominable times because he truckled to Holmendis nowadays just as formerly he had toadied to Manuel. That prim and wary Guivric, whom people called the Sage, Coth had always most cordially detested: and when Coth heard—from somebody, as he cloudily remembered, but it was too much trouble to recall from whom,—that old Guivric too was now departed from Poictesme, it seemed not to matter.

Perhaps, Coth speculated, one of those troubled-looking servants had told him Guivric was dead. Almost everybody was dead. And in any event, it did not matter about Guivric. Nothing really mattered any longer....

All that Coth had ever loved was gone out of life. Gray Manuel, the most superb and admirable of earthly lords (howsoever often the man had needed a little candid talking to, for his own good), and peevish tender-hearted wise Miramon, and courteous Anavalt, and pedantic innocent Kerin (who had been used to blink at you once or twice, like the most amiable of owls, before he gave his opinion upon any subject), and Holden, the most brave where all were fearless, and indolent gay Gonfal, whom you might even permit, within limits, to rally you, because Gonfal was the world’s playmate,—all these were gone, the dearest of comrades that any warrior had ever known, in that lost, far-off season when the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had kept earth noisy with the clashing of their swords, and had darkened heaven with the smoke of the towns they were sacking, and when throughout the known world men had talked about the wonders which these champions were performing with Dom Manuel to lead them.

And so many splendid women too were gone: these days produced only your flibbertigibbet Melicents and Dorothys and such trash. There were no women nowadays like Azra, nor like Gunnhilda, nor like Muirnê of the Marshes,—or like plump, ardent, brown Utsumé, or like Orgeleuse, that proud lady of Cyprus, who had yet yielded in the end, or like Azra.... And Coth, chewing meditatively at nothingness, with sunken and toothless lips, thought also about great-hearted Dame Abonde, and about little Fleurette, and about Azra, and about Credhê, that jolly if remarkably exigent Irish girl, and about tall Asgerda, and about Azra, and about Bar, that treacherous but very lovely sea-wife, and about Oriande, and about poor Felfel Rhasif Yedua, who had given all the hair of her body and afterward her life, to preserve his life, and about Azra.

He remembered the girl that Azra had been, and he thought without any joy about the scores of other delectable persons which Coth had known, amorously and intricately, so very long ago. All these women were gone out of living: one or two of them might perhaps as yet pretend to survive in the repulsive skins of shriveled old lean ugly hags, and in some remote chimney-corner or another might as yet be mumbling—with sunken and toothless lips, like his own lips,—over nothingness; for nothingness was now their portion too; and those close-kissing, splendid, satiated, half-swooning girls whom Coth remembered, with indelicate precision, now no longer existed anywhere.

And Jurgen, the unparalleled of babies, and that cuddling little lad prattling his childish lies about Dom Manuel and ascents into heaven and other nonsense to ward off a spanking, and that fine upstanding boy just graduating into pimples in whom Coth had so exulted when Coth returned from Tollan and the throne of Tollan,—his Jurgen in dozens upon dozens of stages of growth,—now every one of these dear sons was gone. There remained only a dissolute and heartless wastrel bellowing rhymed nonsense and rampaging about the world wherever the grand duchesses and the abbesses made most of him. Coth looked at his motto.

Life then, at utmost, after all the prizes of life had been gained, and you were a looked-up-to and prosperous alderman, amounted to just this. It profited nothing that you had been a tender and considerate father, or a dutiful and long-suffering son who had boxed your father’s jaws, when you last parted from him, only after considerable provocation,—or a loving and faithful husband to the full extent of human frailty, or a fearless champion killing off brawny adversaries like flies, or even an emperor crowned with that queer soft gold of Tollan and dragging black corrupted gods about the public highways. In the end you were, none the less, a withered hulk, with no more of pride nor any hope of pleasure nor any real desire alive in you; and you felt cold always, even while you nodded here beside the fire; and there was not anybody to talk to, except those perturbed-looking servants who never came very near you....

If you had only had a son, now, matters might be different.... Then Coth recollected that he did, in point of fact, have a son, somewhere. It had slipped his mind for the instant. But old people forget things, and he was very old. Yes, a fine lad, that: and he would be coming in for supper presently—extremely late for supper, with his hat shoved a great way back on his black head, and with his boots all muddy,—and Azra would scold him.... Only, it seemed to Coth that Azra, or somebody, was dead. That was a pity, but it was too much trouble to remember all the pity and the dying that was in the world; it was a great deal too much trouble for an old man to keep these wearying matters quite straight in his mind. And, besides, everybody died; there was for all an end of all adventuring: and nothing whatever could be done about it.

Well, but at least one more adventure was yet to come, for the Coth who could make no wheedling compromise with the fictions by which fools live and preserve alike their foolish hopes and their smirking amenities. He had, he felt, been sometimes rather brusque with these fools. But all that was over, too. They went their way; and he was going his. And, once that last adventure had been achieved, you might hope to settle down comfortably with the swaggering and great-hearted sinners, and to be stationed not too far from that gray squinting sinner who had been the most dear and admirable of earthly lords; and to foregather with all such fine rogues eternally among the genial and robustious flames, in which there was no more loneliness and no more cold and no more pettifogging talk about some Redeemer or another paying your scot, and where no more frightened servants would be spying on you always....

The adventure came unheralded, for Coth died in his sleep, having outlived the wife of his youth by just four months.

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