" That is my affair!' said Forimar hotly. 'I have long cast an eye upon eligible members of the other sex but have never seen one who qualified. For my sensibilities are so acute that the slightest blemish of mind or of body, which a lesser man could put up with, were to me intolerable. So I am, and shall probably remain, wedded to my art. But fear not the failure of our line, Fusonio. If I die, you will succeed me, and you have already begotten five healthy children upon your spouse.'
"Fusonio argued some more, but Forimar put him off, saying: 'Nay; my only true love is Astis, the goddess of love and beauty, herself. Her I have loved with a consuming passion for many years, and no mere mortal wench can compare with her.'
" Then,' said Fusonio, 'your duty is to abdicate in my favor, ere your obsession with beauty bring disaster upon us. You would be permitted to pursue your artistic career undisturbed.'
" 'I will think upon that,' said Forimar. But the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Although he and his brother had always gotten along well enough, they had little in common. Fusonio was a bluff, hearty, sensual type, blind to what Forimar deemed the higher things of life. Fusonio's idea of a large evening was to go incognito to some low tavern frequented by the rougher element and spend the even swilling ale and roaring ribald songs with unwashed peasants and ruffianly muleteers.
"Morever, the idea occurred to Forimar that his brother was seeking to oust him from base motives of ambition. Once he resigned, he feared, nought would stop Fusonio from getting rid of him by force majeure. On the other hand, as long as he kept the crown, the state's revenues provided him with means of pursuing his arts that he could hardly expect to enjoy as a private person.
"Not wishing to quarrel openly with Fusonio, he devised a scheme to get rid of his brother. He made him admiral of a fleet, to explore the Eastern Ocean as far as the fabled isles of Salimor. Fusonio sailed off without demur, for this kind of adventure appealed to him. And Forimar returned to his arts.
"But the remark he had made to Fusonio, of being in love with the goddess Astis, came little by little to signify a real condition. He could think of little save the goddess. Many an all-night vigil he spent in her temple, praying that she would appear unto him. But the goddess failed to manifest herself.
"In a frantic effort to lure the goddess into his arms, Forimar inaugurated a contest: to sculpture a statue of Astis that should, by its ineffable beauty, overcome the goddess's scruples about mating with a mortal. The treasurer was aghast at the rewards that Fbrimar offered; but, with Fusonio's influence gone, there was nothing to stop Forimar. He offered not only a huge prize for first place, but also rewards for all the other sculptors, win or lose.
"Consequently, a number of persons entered the contest who had never sculptured anything in their lives, and some very strange works of art were submitted. One was an untrimmed log with the bark on, whose submitter averred that the spirits had told him that this symbolized the true inward nature of the goddess. Another brought a simple boulder, and another a tangle of iron straps riveted together.
"These were too much even for Forimar, who decided that he was being made sport of. He had these self-styled sculptors whipped out of town and their productions thrown into the sea. He did the same with a sculpture showing, with utmost realism, the goddess being impregnated by the war god Heryx, albeit I have seen the like taken for granted in Mulvan. One had, he said, to draw the line somewhere.
"Natheless, many excellent sculptures were made, in bronze and in marble and in pottery. Nearly all showed the goddess in the likeness of a beautiful naked woman, for such had long been the convention of Novarian art. In due course, Forimar awarded the first prize to a certain Lukisto of Zolon, and lesser prizes to the other contestants. And all the hundreds of statues were placed in the temple of Astis, whose priests could scarcely perform their sacred functions, being compelled to worm their way amid masses of statuary.
"Now it happened that, contemporary with the reign of Forimar in Kortoli, Aussar was under the rule of a priest of Selinde, one Doubri. The priest had turned politician to overthrow the hereditary despots who had for a century cruelly oppressed the folk of Aussar. The new ruler called himself Doubri the Faultless, meaning that he had utterly conquered sin and lust in himself.
"Doubri did, in fact, make many improvements in affairs in Aussar. But he took what many thought an overly rigid and censorious attitude towards those common human weaknesses that are deemed sins by theologians of the stricter sort. Please understand, Your Holiness, that I imply no criticism of your own regime in Tarxia; I do but strive to relate events as they happened.
"Moreover, this Doubri was not satisfied with 'cleaning up' Aussar, as he called his forceful suppression of drinking, dicing, wenching, and other manifestations of sin. The gods, he averred, had laid upon him the duty of liberating other nations from their slough of sin and error. And, when he looked about him, it seemed that Kortoli was most in need of his virtuous intervention. Its king was wholly absorbed in his pursuit of beauty; its people were sinning on a huge and raffish scale; its army had fallen into decay from neglect.
"So the Aussarians marched into Kortoli to right the wrongs they said were rampant in that kingdom. The Kortolian army fled without striking a blow and sought refuge in the capital, which was presently invested by the forces of Doubri. The Aussarians readied battering rams and wheeled belfries and other engines of war to break down or over-swarm the walls. Although these events took place before the invention of the catapult, the besiegers managed natheless to deploy a terrifying array of equipment.
"When it looked as if all were lost, the fleet commanded by Forimar's brother Fusonio sailed into the harbor. Fusonio had gone to fabled Salimor and negotiated a treaty of friendship with the Sophi of that land. When he entered the city, King Forimar ran to him without formality and embraced him, calling upon him to save them all.
"When Fusonio took stock of the situation, he was not encouraged, for the army had become a cowardly rabble, the arsenals contained few usable weapons, the walls were weak and tottery and needed but a few good pokes from a ram to bring them down, and the treasury was all but empty.
" 'Wherefore have we no money?' demanded Fusonio. There was an adequate balance when I left.'
"So Forimar told of the great sculpture contest. Fusonio refrained from saying what an idiot he thought his brother, although his glance conveyed the message. And he said: 'Before we surrender, let me see that proclamation Doubri issued when he attacked us.' And he read the document, noting the vile acts whereof Doubri the Faultless accused the Kortolians:
"'… men, and sometimes women, also, resort to mughouses, where they consume fermented liquors, instead of drinking healthful boiled water. They waste their substance in games of chance. They indulge in croquet and other frivolous pastimes on the days sacred to gods, instead of spending all their free time in contemplation of their sins and prayers for forgiveness. Men and women openly bathe together in the public bath, which the degenerate King Forimar has erected, exposing their persons not only to those of their own sex, which is bad enough, but even to those of the other, which is an unspeakable abomination. They commit fornication and adultery unpunished. Even when lawfully wedded, they copulate in a state of nudity, for sensual pleasure instead of for the righteous purpose of creating offspring to praise the gods. They wear gaudy raiment and wasteful jewelry instead of the chaste and sober garments that please the gods. They lend money at interest, which is sinful as against nature. They exploit the working class by wringing a profit from the labor of these unfortunates. They sell goods by lying about the virtues of their commodities, excusing this mendacity by calling it "salesmanship"…'