11. THE COMFORTABLE MUSIC
Just so did it fare with Madoc in many kingdoms. He wandered everywhither, writing noble songs with his black pen. He sang these songs before great notabilities, before the Soldan of Ethiopa under a purple awning worked with silver crescents, and before the Pope of Rome in a white marble room quite empty of all furnishing, and before the Old Man of the Mountains beside a fire in a grove of fir trees at midnight. Everywhere people of every estate delighted in Madoc’s song-making, and they applauded the refining influence of his art.
Wheresoever Madoc sang, though it were in a thieves’ kitchen or in the dark cell of a prison, his comforting music became a spur to the magnanimity of his hearers. They overflowed forthwith with altruism and kindliness and every manner of virtue which was not too immediately expensive: they loved their fellows, upon no provocation detectable by Madoc: and they exulted to be the favored children and the masterworks of Whoever happened to be their tribal god, in a universe especially designed for them and their immediate relatives to occupy.
And Madoc envied the amiable notions which he provoked but might not share. For always, when his music soared at its most potent, he heard the skirling of another nature of music, which was all a doubtfulness and a discontent.
12. PUZZLE OF ALL ARTISTS
Yet, as it seemed, no other person heard that skirling music. No other person willed to hear a music which doubtfulness and discontent made unexhilarating. They thronged, instead, to hear the sugared and the grandiose music which Madoc peddled, and which, like a drug, buoyed up its hearers with self-approval as concerned the present and with self-confidence as touched what was to come.
They listened, and they grinned complacently, who were the kings and the archbishops and the barons and the plowmen alike,—each one of them already a skeleton and a grinning death’s-head so very thinly veiled with flesh and hair. They grinned, while at the feet of each lay crouched the inescapable gloom of his shadow, to serve as an ever-present reminder of that darkness which would presently leap and devour him. Meanwhile they listened to the bedrugging music which Madoc peddled: and every heart made of red, moving dust, upon a brief vacation from the lawns and gutters of earth, was exulting.
It troubled Madoc whenever he heard any of his hearers talk exaltedly about the songs which Madoc made with his black quill, and it troubled Madoc that not any of the noble songs which he was making could ever wholly shut out from Madoc’s ears the skirling music of Ettarre the witch-woman.
13. LEADS TO A LIZARD
Therefore he went to Maya of the Fair Breasts, who controlled Wednesday. Before her at that instant stood an amber basin with green stones set about the rim of it. Inside this basin was the appearance of a shining lizard with very red, protuberant eyes which moved and glittered as the panting creature whispered to Dame Maya about that which was to come.
When Madoc came, the wise woman arose and put aside her cold, familiar counsellor. She went toward young Madoc with a light of wooing in her proud and sullen face. He found her exceedingly handsome, but he said nothing about this.
Instead, before her kindling gaze, he looked downward. Thus it was that he saw the lizard had put on the appearance of a tiny silver-colored pig. As Madoc looked, this pig became a little horse, and then a sheep, and after that an ox, drifting out of one dwarfed bright shaping into another shaping just as a cloud changes. But Madoc said nothing about this, either.
He said only, “Do you, who are all-wise, show me that way in which I may win to the accursed witch Ettarre, who has made empty my life, who permits no magnanimities to flourish in my parched heart, and who turns to mockery the noble songs that I write with the quill pen made of a feather from the wing of the Father of All Lies!”
14. HOW POETS MAY REFORM
Dame Maya led him to a peaceful place where every kind of domestic animal was dozing in her fine market-garden upon Mispec Moor. Sheep and asses and pigs and oxen and draught-horses all rested comfortably in this peaceful place. They had not any care in the world, and no desires save those which food and sleeping satisfied.
The wise woman said, “Through a magic well known to me, poor Madoc, you may become as one of these who have been my husbands.”
He asked, “Were these once men?”
Maya of the Fair Breasts answered him, reassuringly, “Yes: all these quiet and useful creatures at one time were mere poets, troubled as you are now troubled, and all these have I saved from that music which is made by the witch-woman, as presently I will save you.”
Madoc cried out, “I do not ask for salvation, but for vengeance!”
She said, “In vengeance there is neither ease nor wisdom; but upon Mispec Moor are both.”
Madoc replied, “Nevertheless, I prefer that you tell me in what way I may come to the accursed witch, and may make an end of her music and of her also.”
The sullen wise woman answered, standing now more near to him, “That way I will not ever tell you, because I like too much your appearance.”
15. RIGHT-THINKING REMEDIED
Then Madoc sang yet another of the songs which he had written with the quill from the wing of the Father of All Lies. He sang of how much good there is in even the very worst of us, and of that priceless spark of divinity which glows in every human breast and needs but properly to be fostered.
The well-nourished beasts that once had been poets arose forthwith, and each lurched clumsily about upon his hind legs. “Let us be worthy, yet, even yet, of that heritage which we have denied! Let us abandon this wicked market-garden wherein are only ease and gluttony, let us discomfort the world’s ease everywhere with right-thinking and with every other high-minded kind of intrepid morality!”
So they babbled and floundered about Madoc, who all the while sang on exaltedly and thought what silly creatures seemed these bemired and madly aspiring overfed animals.
But Dame Maya winced to see her fair name as a competent wife thus imperiled, now that all her transfigured husbands were in revolt. She hastily told Madoc the way to the Waste Beyond the Moon: he ended his singing: and the domestic animals fell back contentedly into the incurious sloth and the fat ease of the wise woman’s market-garden, out of which Madoc passed toward his allotted doom.
PART THREE. OF MADOC IN THE MOON
Le chevalier Madoc lui dit: Vous voir est ce aidé pouvait m’arriver de plus agréable, et je voudrais être avec vous jusqu’a la mari.— Cela peut bien être, dit la jeune fille.
16. LEADS TO THE MOON
All that which Maya of the Fair Breasts had commanded Madoc performed, with his sword and a forked rod and a cup and a five-pointed talisman. This magic brought to him a monster shaped like a feathered lion, but eight and one-half times as large, and having the head and wings of a fighting-cock. Upon the breast of the hippogriffin grew red plumage; its back was of a dark blue color; and its wings were white.
Such was the gaily tinted steed upon which Madoc rode, along strange and unhealthy highways. The spirits of the air beset him: sylphs beckoned to this fine young fellow; Lilith, that very dreadful and delicious Bride of the Serpent, pursued him a great way, because she liked the appearance of Madoc. Nevertheless, he won unhurt to the pale mists and the naked desert space behind the moon.