And he did not say any more about what his father seemed bent upon regarding as Florian’s dream. At ten a boy has learned to humor the notions of his elders. Florian slipped down from the bench, and tucked his book under his arm, and agreed with his father that it was near time for supper.
None the less, though, as the boy stood waiting for that magnificent father of his to arise from the bench, Florian reflected how queer it was that, before the falling of the Nis magic, this beautiful Melior must have known and talked with Florian’s heavenly patron, St. Hoprig of Gol. It was to Holy Hoprig that Florian’s mother had commended the boy with her last breath, and it was to Holy Hoprig that Florian’s father had taught the boy to pray in all time of doubt or peccadillo, because this saint was always to be the boy’s protector and advocate. And this made heaven seem very near and real, the knowledge that always in celestial courts this bright friend was watching, and, Florian hoped, was upon occasion tactfully suggesting to the good God that one must not be too severe with growing boys. Melior—Florian thought now,—was remotely and half timidly to be worshipped: Hoprig, the friend and intercessor,—a being even more kindly and splendid than was your superb father,—you loved. …
Florian had by heart all the legends about Holy Hoprig. Particularly did Florian rejoice in the tale of the saint’s birth, in such untoward circumstances as caused the baby to be placed in a barrel, and cast into the sea, to be carried whither wind and tide directed. Florian knew that for ten years the barrel floated, tossing up and down in all parts of the ocean, while regularly an angel passed the necessary food to young Hoprig through the bung-hole. Finally, at Heaven’s chosen time, the barrel rolled ashore near Manneville, on the low sands of Fomor Beach. A fisherman, thinking that he had found a cask of wine, was about to tap it with a gimlet; then from within, for the first time, St. Hoprig speaks to man: “Do not injure the cask. Go at once to the abbot of the monastery to which this land belongs, and bid him come to baptize me.”
It seemed to Florian that was a glorious start in life for a boy of ten, a boy of just the same age as Florian. All the later miracles and prodigies appeared, in comparison with that soul-contenting moment, to be compact of paler splendors. Nobody, though, could hear unenviously of the long voyage to the Red Islands and the realm of Hlif, and to Pohjola, and even to the gold-paved Strembolgings, where every woman contains a serpent so placed as to discourage love-making,—of that pre-eminently delightful voyage made by St. Hoprig and St. Hork in the stone trough, which, after its landing upon the coasts of Poictesme, at mid-winter, during a miraculous shower of apple-blossoms, white oxen drew through the country hillward, with the two saints by turns preaching and converting people all the way to Perdigon. For that, Florian remembered, was the imposing fashion in which Holy Hoprig had come to the court of Melior’s father,—and had wrought miracles there also, to the discomfiture of the abominable Horrig. But more important, now, was the reflection that St. Hoprig had in this manner come to Melior and to the unimaginable beauty which, in the high place, a coverlet of violet stuff just half concealed. …
Certainly Monseigneur St. Hoprig must have loved Melior very much, and these two must have been very marvelous when they went about a more heroic and more splendid world than Florian could hope ever to inhabit. It was of their beauty and holiness that the boy thought, with a dumb yearning to be not in all unworthy of these bright, dear beings. That was the longing—to be worthy,—which possessed Florian as he stood waiting for his father to rise from the bench beneath the little tree from the East. There, the Duke also seemed to meditate, about something rather pleasant.
“You said just now, monsieur my father,” Florian stated, a trifle worried, “that we of Puysange have not always imitated the good examples of St. Hoprig. Have we been very bad ?”
Monsieur de Puysange had put on his plumed hat, but he stayed seated. He appeared now, as grown people so often do, amused for no logical or conceivable reason: though, indeed, the Duke seemed to find most living creatures involuntarily amusing.
He said: “We have displayed some hereditary foibles. For it is the boast of the house of Puysange that we trace in the direct male line from Poictesme’s old Jurgen. That ancient wanderer, says our legend, somehow strayed into the bedchamber of Madame Felise de Puysange; and the result of his errancy was the vicomte who flourished under the last Capets.”
Young Florian, in accord with the quaint custom of the day, had been reared without misinformation as to how or whence children came into the world. So he said only, if a little proudly, “Yes,—he was another Florian, I remember, like me.
“There were queer tales about this first Florian, also, who is reputed to have vanished the moment he was married, and to have re-appeared here, at Storisende, some thirty years later, with his youth unimpaired. He declared himself to have slept out the intervening while,—an excuse for remissness in his marital duties which sceptics have considered both hackneyed and improbable.”
“Well,” Florian largely considered, “but then there is Sir Ogier still asleep in Avalon until France has need of him; and John the Divine is still sleeping at Ephesus until it is time to bear his witness against Antichrist; and there is Merlin in Brocéliande, and there is St. Joseph of Arimathaea in the white city of Sarras—and really, monsieur my father, there is Melior, and all the rest of King Helmas’ people up at Brunbelois.”
“Are you still dreaming of your Melior, tenacious child! Certainly you are logical, you cite good precedents for your namesake, and to adhere to logic and precedent is always safe. I hope you will remember that.”
“I shall remember that, monsieur my father.”
“Certainly, too, this story of persons who sleep for a miraculous while is common to all parts of the world. This Florian de Puysange, in any event, married a granddaughter of the great Dom Manuel; so that we descend from the two most famous of the heroes of Poictesme: but, I fancy, it is from Jurgen that our family has inherited the larger number of its traits.”
“Anyhow, we have risen from just being vicomtes—”
Florian’s father had leaned back, he had put off his provisional plan of going in to supper. You could not say that the good gentleman exactly took pride in his ancestry: rather, he found his lineage worthy of him, and therefore he benevolently approved of it.
So he said now, complacently enough: “Yes, our house has prospered. Steadily our fortunes have been erected, and in dignity too we have been erected. Luck seems to favor us, however, most heartily when a woman rules France, and it is to exalted ladies that we owe most of our erections. Thus Queen Ysabeau the Bavarian notably advanced the Puysange of her time, very much as Anne of Beaujeu and Catherine de Medici did afterward. Many persons have noted the coincidence. Indeed, it was only sixty years ago that Marion de Lorme spoke privately to the Great Cardinal, with such eloquence that the Puysange of the day—another Florian, and a notably religious person,—had presently been made a duke, with an appropriate estate in the south—”
“I know,” said Florian, not a bit humble about his erudition. “That is how we came to be here in Poictesme. Mademoiselle de Lorme was a very kind lady, was she not, monsieur my father?”
“She was so famed, my son, for all manner of generosity that when my grandfather remodeled Bellegarde, and erected the Hugonet wing of the present chateau, he sealed up in the cornerstone, just as people sometimes place there the relics of a saint, both of Mademoiselle de Lorme’s garters. Probably there was some salutary story connected with his acquiring of them; for my pious grandfather cared nothing for such vanities as jeweled garters, his mind being wholly set upon higher things.”