Then Madoc sang the newest song which he had made with his black pen. He sang very movingly of how many young men would be killed in the impending war, and of how this fact would be a source of considerable distress to their mothers.
The spearmen and the archers dropped each a tear from each eye: the Emperor himself was heard to clear his throat. “I have a mother,” said one warrior.
His neighbor replied, “I have not; but I formerly had one, and the principle is the same.”
The entire army agreed that the principle was excellent; a retreat was sounded; and war was deferred.
9. PHILANTHROPY PROSPERS
Then Madoc made yet other songs for the war-loving people of the Emperor Pandras. He made fine stirring songs about philanthropy, and many simple chanteys such as workmen use at their labors.
The warriors turned from their belligerent raids, to the building of schoolhouses and hospitals and public drinking-fountains and domed temples for their three national deities. Laboring, these warriors sang the songs which Madoc had made, and his songs put a new vigor in them: their philanthropic endeavors went forward the more nimbly because of Madoc’s noble and inspiring songs.
“Build,” Madoc sang, “for the welfare of those who come hereafter! Create for them a fairer and more enlightened world! Build, as befits the children of the great Builder!”
But in a while he heard another music: he reflected how stupid were these perspiring and large-muscled persons who toiled for the welfare of a problematic and, it well might be, an unmeritorious posterity, for people who had done nothing whatever to place anybody under any least obligations: and his songs, which brought benevolence and vigor into the living of all other persons, appeared to Madoc rather silly now that again he had heard the skirling music of Ettarre the witch-woman.
10. SPOILS OF THE VICTOR
But the people of Ethion, after they had waited a reasonable while for their annual war to begin, lost patience before this disrespect for tradition, and bestirred themselves. They invaded the country of the Emperor Pandras. They were driven back and were slaughtered cosily, in their own homes, which were then destroyed.
“Our triumph is gratifying,” said Pandras, after he had attended divine worship and had sent for Madoc. “Only, now that we have won this war, it seems right we should pay for it; now that we have laid waste the cities of Ethion, to rebuild them is our manifest duty: and in consequence I shall have to redouble, or perhaps it would be more simple merely to multiply by five, the taxes which are now being paid by my people.”
“Yes, majesty,” said Madoc, sighing somewhat.
“It follows, Madoc, that immediately after we have tried and hanged the surviving leaders of Ethion, we shall need a new song from you, as to the brotherhood of all mankind and as to the delight which a proper-minded person gets out of discomfort when it helps his enemies to live at ease, because otherwise my people may not enjoy paying five times as many taxes.”
“I withdraw, sir, to complete this song,” said Madoc, and after that, he withdrew, not merely from the presence of Pandras, but from out of the country of Pandras.
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.”