“Ah, Monsieur Janicot, but a Puysange cannot take alms from anybody. No, let us be logical! There must be a price set and paid, so that I may remain under no distasteful and incendiary debts.”
Janicot hid excellently the disappointment he must have felt. “Then suppose we fix it that she is yours until you have had a child by her? And that then she will vanish, and that then the child is to be given me, as my honorarium, by”—Janicot explained,—“the old ritual.”
“Well,” Florian replied, “I may logically take this to be a case of desperate necessity, since all my happiness depends upon it. Now in such cases Paracelsus admits the lawfulness of seeking aid from—if you will pardon the technical term, Monsieur Janicot,—from unclean spirits. He is supported in this, as I remember it, by Peter Aerodius, by Bartolus of Sassoferato, by Salecitus, and by other divines and schoolmen. So I have honorable precedents, I do not offend against convention. Yes, I accept the offer; and the child, whatever my paternal pangs, shall be given, as your honorarium, by the old ritual.”
“Of course,” said Janicot, reflectively, “if there should be no child—”
“Monsieur, I am Puysange. There will be a child.”
“Why, then, it is settled. Now I think of it, you will need the sword Flamberge with which to perform this rite, since Melior is of the Leshy, and that sword alone of all swords may spill their blood—”
“But where is Flamberge nowadays?”
“There is one at home, in an earthen pot, who could inform you.”
“Let us not speak of that,” said Florian, hastily, “but do you tell me where is this sword.”
“I have no notion as to the present whereabouts of Flamberge. Nor, since you stickle for etiquette, is it etiquette for me to aid you in finding this sword until you have made me a sacrifice.”
“Why, but you offered Melior as a free gift!” said Florian, smiling to see how obvious were the traps this Janicot set for him. “Is a princess of smaller importance than a sword?”
“A princess is easier to get, because a princess is easier to make. A sword, far less a magic sword like Flamberge, cannot be fashioned without long training and preparation and special knowledge. But no man needs more than privacy and a queen’s goodwill to make a princess.”
“I confess, Monsieur Janicot, that your logic is indisputable. Well, when at the winter solstice you hold your Festival of the Wheel, I shall not sacrifice to you. That would be to relapse into the old evil ways of heathenry, a relapse for which is appointed an agonizing reproof, administered in realms unnecessary to mention, but doubtless familiar to you. However, I shall be glad to tender you a suitable Christmas present, since that sacred season falls at the same time.”
“You may call it whatever you prefer. But it must be a worthy gift that one offers me at my Yule Feast.”
“You shall have—not as a sacrifice, you understand, but as a Christmas present,—the greatest man living in France. You shall have no less a gift than the life of that weasel-faced prime-minister who now rules France, the all-powerful Cardinal Dubois. For the rest, your bargain is reasonable: it contains none of those rash mortgagings of the soul, about which—if you will pardon my habitual frankness, Monsieur Janicot,—one has to be careful in all business dealings with your people. So let us subscribe this bond.”
Janicot laughed: his traffic was not in souls, he said; and he said also that Florian, for a nobleman, was deplorably the man of business. None the less, Janicot now produced from his pocket a paper upon which the terms of their bargain happened, rather unaccountably, to be neatly written out: and they both signed this paper, with the pens and ink which Florian had not previously noticed to be laid there so close at hand, upon one of the tree-stumps.
Then Janicot put up the paper, and remarked: “A thing done has an end. For the rest, these fellows will escort you to Brunbelois.”
“And of what fellows do you speak?” asked Florian.
“Why, those servants of mine just behind you,” replied Janicot.
And Florian, turning, saw in the roadway two very hairy persons in an oxcart, drawn by two brown goats which were as large as oxen; and yet Florian was certain no one of these things had been in that place an instant before. This Janicot, however easy to see through had been his traps for Florian, was beyond doubt efficient.
Florian said: “The liveries of your retainers tend somewhat to the capillary. None the less, I shall be deeply honored, monsieur, to be attended by any servants of your household.”
Janicot replied: “Madame Melusine has ordained against men and the living of mankind eternal banishment from the high place. Very well!”
He drew his sword, and without any apparent effort he struck off the head of his brown horse. He set this head upon a stake, and he thrust the other end of the stake into the ground, so that the stake stood upright.
“I here set up,” said Janicot, “a nithing post. I turn the post. I turn the eternal banishment against Madame Melusine.”
He waited for a moment. He was entirely brown: about him lilies bloomed, with a surprising splendor of white and gold: and the flowering at his feet was more red than blood.
He moved the stake so that the horse’s head now faced the east, and Janicot said: “Also I turn this post against the protecting monsters of the high place, in order that they may all become as witless as now is this slain horse. I send a witlessness upon them from the nithing post, which makes witless and takes away the strength of the rulers and of the controlling gods of whatever land this nithing post be turned against. I, who am what I am, have turned the post. I have sent forth the Seeing of All, the Seeing that makes witless. A thing done has an end.”
6. Philosophy of the Lower Class
FLORIAN parted from brown Janicot for that while, and mounted his white horse, and rode upward toward the castle of Brunbelois, without further thought of the girl at Storisende whom logic had picked out to be his wife. Florian was followed by the oxcart which Janicot had provided. Florian found all the monsters lying in a witless stupor. So he fearlessly set upon and killed the black bleps and the crested strycophanes and the gray calcar.
He passed on upward, presently to decapitate the eale, which writhed its movable horns very remarkably in dying. Florian went on intrepidly, and despatched the golden-maned and -whiskered leucrocotta. The tarandus, farther up the road, proved more troublesome: this monster had, after its sly habit, taken on the coloring of the spot in which it lay concealed, so that it was hard to find; and, when found, its hide was so tough as to resist for some while the edge of Florian’s sword. The thin and flabby neck of the catoblepas was in contrast gratifyingly easy to sever. Indeed, this was in all respects a contemptible monster, dingily colored, and in no way formidable now that its eyes were shut.
Florian’s heroic butchery was well-nigh over: so he passed on cheerily to the next turn in the road; and in that place a moment later the bright red mantichora was impotently thrusting out its sting in the death agony, a sudden wind came up from the west, and the posture of the sun was changed.
Having dauntlessly performed these unmatched feats, the champion paused to reward himself with a pinch of snuff. The lid of his snuff-box bore the portrait of his dear friend and patron, Philippe d’Orléans, and it seemed odd to be regarding familiar features in these mischancy uplands. Then Florian, refreshed, looked about him. Three incredibly weather-beaten sheep were grazing to his right: to the left he saw, framed by the foliage upon each side of and overhanging the green roadway, the castle of Brunbelois.