In short, the old fellow took Poictesme’s epiphany almost too calmly. . . . Glaum was satisfied, on the ground that a conversion was a conversion, and an outing for all the angels in heaven. But it was apparent that Holy Holmendis did not quite like the posture of affairs. . . . You could not, of course, detect in this incurious receptiveness any skepticism; nor could a person who went ten times too far in the way of faith be, very rationally, termed an unbeliever. It was, rather, as if Kerin viewed the truth without joy: it was as if Kerin had, somehow, become overfamiliar with the sublime truths about Manuel the Redeemer some while before he heard them; and so, was hearing them, now at long last, without any appropriate upliftedness and flow of spirits.
Holmendis must have felt that the desiderata here were intangible. In any event, he shook his aureoled head; and, speaking in the tongue of his native Philistia, he said something to Glaum-Without-Bones—which Glaum could not at all understand,—about “the intelligentsia, so-called.” But Holmendis did not resort to any dreadful miracle by which old Kerin might have been appalled into a more proper excitement and joyousness. . . .
Yet it was a very unbounded joy, and a joy indeed at which all beholders wondered, to Kerin of Nointel, when he saw and embraced the fine son, named Fauxpas, who had been born to Saraide during the fifth year of Kerin’s studies underground. For Kerin’s studies had informed him that such remarkably prolonged gestations are the infallible heralds of one or another form of greatness,—a fact evinced by the birth of Phoebos Apollo and Osiris and of several other gods and of all elephants,—and Kerin deduced that his son would in some way or another rise to worldly preeminence.
And that inference proved to be reasonably true, since it was this Fauxpas de Nointel who, when but a lad of twenty, led Count Emmerick’s troops for him in the evil days of Maugis d’Aigremont’s rebellion, and who held Poictesme for Manuel’s son until aid came from the Comte de la Foret. For twelve years at least this son of Kerin was thus preeminent among most of his associates, and twelve years is a reasonable slice out of any man’s life. And the eldest son of Fauxpas de Nointel was that Ralph who married Madame Adelaide, the daughter of the Comte de la Foret, and the granddaughter of Dom Manuel, and who builded at Nointel the great castle with seven towers which still endures.
BOOK EIGHT
THE CANDID FOOTPRINT
“They have reproached the footsteps of thine appointed.”
—Psalms, lxxxix, 51
Chapter L. Indiscretion of a Bailiff
Now the tale tells that upon the day of the birth of the first son begotten by Count Emmerick, in lawful marriage and with the aid of his own wife Radegonde, there was such a drinking of healths and toasts as never before was known at Storisende. The tale speaks of a most notable banquet, at which twelve dishes were served to every two persons, with a great plenty of the best wine and beer. In the minstrels’ gallery were fiddlers, trumpeters and drummers, those who tossed tambourines, and those who played upon the flute. Ten poets discoursed meanwhile of the feats of Dom Manuel, and presented in even livelier colors the impendent achievements of the Redeemer’s second coming into Poictesme with a ferocious heavenly cortege. And meanwhile also the company drank, and the intoxication of verse was abetted with red wine and white.
Since the poems were rather long, all this resulted in an entertainment from which the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra went homeward hiccoughing and even more than usually benevolent, and without any consciousness of that one single slight misstep—induced by the allied virtues of patriotism and of alcohol,—which had imperiled his continued stay upon earth.
For Ninzian of Yair and Upper Ardra had not wholly broken with the heroic cenatory ways of the years wherein Dom Manuel ruled over Poictesme. This seemed the more regrettable because Ninzian, always a pious and philanthropic person, had otherwise become with age appropriately staid. He in theory approved of every one of the reforms enacted everywhere by the Countess Niafer, and confirmed by the Countess Radegonde; and, in practice, Ninzian was of course a staunch supporter of his revered and intimate associate, St. Holmendis, in all the salutary crusades against elves and satyrs and trolls and other uncanonical survivals from unorthodox mythologies, and against the free-thinking of persons who questioned the legend of Manuel, and in the holy man’s hunting down of such demons and stringing up of such heretics, and in all other devout labors. But there, nevertheless, was no disputing that the benevolent and florid bailiff of Upper Ardra had kept a taint of the robustious social customs of Dom Manuel’s worldly heyday.
It followed that Ninzian evaded none of the toasts at Count Emmerick’s banquet and left no friend unpledged. Instead, sleek Ninzian drank the wines of Orleans, of Anjou and of Burgundy; of Auxerre and Beaune, and of St. Jean and St. Porcain. He drank Malvoisin, and Montrose, and Vernage, and Runey. He drank the wines of Greece, both Patras and Farnese; he drank spiced beers; he drank muscatel; and he drank hypocras. He did not ignore the cider nor the pear cider; to the sweet white sparkling wine of Volnay he confessed, and he exhibited, an especial predilection; and he drank copiously, also, of the Alsatian sherry and of the Hungarian tokay.
Thereafter Ninzian went homeward with a pleasurable at-randomness, for which—in a so liberal contributor to every pious cause and persecution,—appropriate allowances were made by St. Holmendis and everybody else except one person only. Ninzian was married.
Chapter LI. The Queer Bird
The next evening Ninzian and his wife were walking in the garden. They were a handsome couple, and the high-hearted love that had been between them in their youth was a tale which many poets had embroidered. It was an affection, too, which had survived its consummation with so slight impairment that Ninzian during the long while since he had promised eternal fidelity was not known to have begotten but one by-blow. Even that, as he was careful to explain, was by way of charity: for well-thought-of rich old Pettipas, the pawnbroker at Beauvillage, had lived childlessly with his buxom young second wife for nearly three years before Ninzian, in odd moments, provided this deserving couple with a young heiress.
But in the main Ninzian preferred his own lean and pietistic wife above all other women, even so long after he had won her in the heyday of their adventurous youth. Now they who were in the evening of life were lighted by a golden sunset as they went upon a flagged walkway, made of white and blue stones; and to either side were the small glossy leaves and the crimson flowering of well-tended rose-bushes. They waited thus for Holy Holmendis, their fellow laborer in multifarious forms of church work and social betterment, for the Saint had promised to have supper with them. And Balthis (for that was the name of Ninzian’s wife) said, “Look, my dear, and tell me what is that?”
Ninzian inspected the flower-bed by the side of the walkway, and he replied, “My darling, it appears to be the track of a bird.”
“But surely there is in Poictesme no fowl with a foot so huge!”
“No. But many migratory monsters pass by in the night, on their way north, at this time of year: and, clearly, one of some rare species has paused here to rest. However, as I was telling you, my pet, we have now in hand—”
“Why, but think of it, Ninzian! The print is as big as a man’s foot!”
“Come, precious, you exaggerate! It is the track of a largish bird,—an eagle, or perhaps a roc, or, it may be, the Zhar-Ptitza paused here,—but it is nothing remarkable. Besides, as I was telling you, we have already in hand, for the edifying of the faithful, a bit of Mary Magdalene’s haircloth, the left ring-finger of John the Baptist, a suit of Dom Manuel’s underclothes, and one of the smaller stones with which St. Stephen was martyred—”