James Branch Cabell

“ Janicot said now, as if in meditation, “is a fine and impressive monosyllable.”
“Sin,” Michael said, with sternness, “is that which is forbidden by the word of God.”
“But, to be sure!” Florian put in. “Sin is a very grave matter: and to expiate it requires stained windows and candles and, above all, repentance—”
“Ah, but a word,” said Janicot, “has no inherent meaning, it has merely the significance a mutual agreement arbitrarily attaches to that especial sound. Let me refill your cup, which I perceive to be empty: and, Monsieur the Duke, do you stop talking to your judges. ”

“ Let Hoprig and Melior, and their child too, return to Brunbelois and to the old time before he was a saint. Let them return to the high place and to the old time that is overpast now everywhere except at Brunbelois. Thus earth will be rid of your scandal-breeding saint, and Hoprig of his halo and Florian of his threatened hysteria. And this Melior and this Hoprig will no longer be real persons, but will once more blend into an ancient legend of exceeding beauty and holiness. And nobody anywhere will be dissatisfied. ”

“ Thus it was not until the coming of spring that Florian rode away from the Hôtel de Puysange, wherein he had just passed the first actually unhappy period of Florian’s life. For this man had long and fervently cherished his exalted ideals: and since his boyhood the beauty of Melior and the holiness of Hoprig had been at once the criteria and the assurance of human perfectibility. To think of these two had preserved him in faith and in wholesome optimism: for here was perfect beauty and perfect holiness attained once by mankind, and in consequence not unattainable. ”

“ Still, it is not happiness I am looking for, but a sword to which all this philosophizing brings us no step nearer. No, it is not happiness I seek. For through that sword, when I have got it, will come such misery as I cannot bear to think of, since its sharp edge must sever me irrevocably from that perfect beauty which I have adored since boyhood. None the less, I have given my word; and these old phantoms have unanimously reassured me that it is better to have love end at fulltide. So let us be logical, and let us go forward, Monsieur Horvendile, as merrily as may be possible. ”

“ But such women, if there indeed was ever Melior’s peer, are now vague echoes and blown dust. I cry the names that once were magic. I cry to Semiramis and to Erigonê and to Guenevere, and there is none to answer. Their beauty has gone down into the cold grave, it has nourished grasses, and cattle chew the cud which was their loveliness. Therefore I cry again, I cry the name of Melior: and though none answers, I know that I cry upon the unflawed and living beauty which my own eyes have seen.”
She waited—there was the miracle—for Florian de Puysange. ”

“ They who fail in their endeavors have still in them the animus of desire: but the man who attains his will cohabits with an assassin, for, having it, he perceives that he does not want it; and desire is dead in him, and the man too is dead. No, Florian, be advised by me; and do you avoid greatness as you should—and by every seeming do not,—the devil!”
So Philippe d’Orléans also, thought Florian, had got what he wanted, only to find it a damnable nuisance. ”

“ Florian found his appearance far more companionable than was that of the fat Queen (one of the water folk) , whose skin was faintly blue, and whose hair was undeniably green, and whose little mouth seemed lost and discontented in her broad face.
Beside them, but not upon the dark red daīs, sat the high-priest of Llaw Gyffes, a fine looking and benevolent prelate, in white robes edged with a purple pattern of quaint intricacies: he wore a wreath of mistletoe about his broad forehead; and around and above this played a pulsing radiancy. ”

“ I design, in any event, no impiety, for to be impious is unwise. I merely mean that I assume Someone also to be our neighbor, in His high place, and that I think His notions also should be treated with respect.”
“I see,” said Florian. But all that was youthful in him seemed to stir in dim dissent from unambitious aims.
“I mean, in short, that the wise person will conform—with, it may be, a permissible shrug,—to each and every notion that is affected by those neighbors whose strength is greater than his. ”

“ It is true I have made to Heaven some civil tenders, in the shape of good works and church-windows, just as I have been at pains to supply you with blessed wine and wafers. It seemed well in logic to preserve a friendly relation with both sides. For the rest, whatever I felt my life to lack I have myself fetched into it, even holiness and beauty, even”—Florian smiled,—“even Melior and Hoprig. It is perhaps for this self-sufficiency that I am punished in a world wherein people are expected to live and to act in herds because of their common distrust of the future and of one another. ”

“ Now Florian’s plump face was altered, and his voice shook a little. He said:
“Her beauty is that beauty which women had in the world’s youth, and whose components the old world forgets in this gray age. It may be that Queen Helen possessed such beauty, she for whom the long warring was. It may be that Cleopatra of Egypt, who had for her playmates emperors and a gleaming snake, and for her lovers all poets that have ever lived, or it may be that some other royal lady of the old time, in the world’s youth, wore flesh that was the peer of Melior’s flesh in loveliness. ”

“ Meanwhile he does not drink, he merely dreams, this little Florian. He dreams of beauty and of holiness fetched back by him to an earth which everywhere fell short of his wishes, fetched down by him intrepidly from that imagined high place where men attain to their insane desires. He dreams of aspiring and joy and color and suffering and unreason, and of those quaint taboos which you and he call sin, as being separate things, not seeing how all blends in one vast cup. ”

“ He hardly remembered, afterward, what he and Melior did or talked of, during the days wherein Brunbelois prepared for their wedding: time and events, and people too, seemed to pass like bright shining vapors; all living swam in a haze of happiness. Florian now thought little of logic, he thought nothing of precedent; he thrust aside the implications of his depressing discovery as to his patron saint: he stayed in everything light-headedly bewildered through hourly contemplation of that unflawed loveliness which he had for a quarter of a century desired. ”

“ You could not repent of having given the ambitious and capable young a good start in life. Among Florian’s married friends of higher condition, among a host of marquises and duchesses and countesses, his passing had tinged the quiet round of matrimony with romance, had left a plenitude of pleasant memories, and not infrequently had improved the quality of that household’s progeny. Here too he had in logic to admit he had scattered benefactions, of which no kindly-hearted person could repent. ”

“ Mankind have their good points, but—to my knowledge,—no firm claim of any sort on admiration. I have been familiar with no person without finding that intimacy made some liking inevitable and any real respect preposterous. I deduce that in no virtue, and in no viciousness, does man excel: his endowments, either way, are inadequate. So holiness and beauty must remain to me just notions very pleasant to think about, and quite harmless to aim at if you like, if only because such aiming makes no noticeable difference anywhere. But they remain also unattained by mortal living. ”

“ He passed Amneran and a spur of the great forest, now that he went to ford the Duardenez. As he neared Acaire he thought, idly, and with small shrugs, of a boy’s adventuring to the sleeping princess in the midst of these woods, and of the beauty which he had not ever forgotten utterly: and his heart was troubled with that worshipful and hopeless longing which any thinking about this Melior would always evoke in Florian, because he knew that his “dream,” as people would call it, was a far more true and vital thing than Florian’s daily living. ”

“ I only know the danger of accepting a free gift from any fiend; and you I take to be, in cosmic politics, a leader of the party in opposition.”
Janicot looked grave for a moment. He said:
“No, I am not a fiend, Monsieur the Duke; nor, for that matter, does your current theology afford me any niche.”
“Well, then,” asked Florian, with his customary fine frankness, “if you are not the devil, what the devil are you?”
Janicot answered: “I am all that has been and that is to be. Never has any man been able to imagine what I am.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the gander sang to Florian of the proper way in which children should be born and should live thereafter. About the glory of love and the felicities of marriage, about patriotism and success in business and about the high assurances of religion, the gander sang, and about optimism and philanthropy and about the steady advancing of every kind of social improvement. And of man that is the child and heir of God, and of the splendor of man’s works, and of the magnanimity of human nature, and of the wonder of man’s living upon earth, the gander sang also. ”

“ Florian saw the evicted spider, large and clumsy looking but very quick of movement, trundling away from molestation much as the centipede had fled.
It seemed to him that no life ought to be in this place; not even the life of insects should survive in this ruined haunt of memories. He set the two rocks at right angles to the boulder, just as he and a girl, who no longer existed anywhere, had placed them eighteen years ago. Moss had grown upon the boulder, so that the rocks did not fit against it so snugly as they had done once, but they stood upright now a foot apart. ”

“ The Duke said: “To submit is the great lesson. I too was once a dreamer: and in dreams there are lessons. But to submit, without dreaming any more, is the great lesson; to submit, without either understanding or repining, and without demanding of life too much of beauty or of holiness, and without shirking the fact that this universe is under no least bond ever to grant us, upon either side of the grave, our desires. To do that, my son, does not satisfy and probably will not ever satisfy a Puysange. ”

“ Raoul had the grand air of their father: a tall man was always so much more impressive. For the rest, it was fully apparent that the dear fellow’s abominable wife had been at her mischief-making.
“Monsieur the Duke,” Raoul began, “this encounter is indeed fortunate.”
“To encounter Monsieur the Chevalier,” replied Florian, with quite as sweet a stateliness, but feeling rather like a bantam cock beside this big Raoul, “is always a privilege.” ”

“ For Florian could rarely make use of her recipes without recollecting how cruelly the mob had dealt with his venerable instructress: that was, he knew, a sentimental side to his nature, which he could never quite restrain. So he now thought sadly of this stately old-world gentlewoman, so impiously dragged from a convent and strangled, now four years ago, because of her charity toward those who were afflicted by the longevity of others. Yes, life was wasteful, sparing nobody, not even one who was so wise and amiable as La Tophania, nor so lovable as Gian Paolo. ”

“ Janicot said: “For five whole centuries! Jahveh also, being so young a god, must think that a long while; and doubtless he feels honored by these five centuries of patronage.”
“Well, of course,” said Florian, modestly, “as one of the oldest families hereabouts, we find that our example is apt to be followed. But we ourselves think little of our long lineage, we have grown used to it, we think that logically it is only the man himself who matters: and I confess, Monsieur Janicot, that it seems almost droll to see you impressed by our antiquity.” ”

“ Men go enslaved by this dream of beauty: but never yet have they sought to embody it, whether in their wives or in their equally droll works of art, without imperfect results, without results that were maddening to the dreamer. Men are resolved to know that which they may whole-heartedly worship. No, they are not bent upon emulating what they worship: it is, rather, that holiness also is a dream which allures mankind resistlessly. But thus far,—by your leave, good Michael,—they have found nothing to worship which bears logical inspection much better than does Hoprig. ”

“ Time and again, in the soft arms of countesses and abbesses of the very highest fashion, even there would Florian groan to think how many months must elapse before he could with any pretence of decency get rid of that dreadful woman at Bellegarde. For the methods formerly available would not serve here: his pact with brown Janicot afforded to a man of honor no choice except to wait for the birth of the child that was to be Janicot’s honorarium, of the dear child, already beloved with more than the ordinary paternal fondness, whose coming was to ransom its father from so much discomfort. ”

“ Florian had winced when hit, thus for an instant spoiling his aim, but he at once lowered his pistol, and he shot this tall man who had nothing to do with his little brother, neatly through the breast. Raoul de Puysange fired wildly with his second pistol, and drew his sword as if to rush upon Florian, who merely shifted the yet loaded pistol to his uncrippled right hand, and waited. But Raoul had not advanced two paces when Raoul fell. ”

“ We stay, to the last, romantics. So Melior, it may be, will remain to you always that unattainable beauty toward which we of Puysange must always yearn,—just as your patron St. Hoprig will always afford to you, in his glorious life and deeds, an example which you will admire and, I trust, emulate. I admit that such emulation,” the Duke added, more drily, “has not always been inescapable by us of Puysange.”
“I cannot hope to be so good as was Monseigneur St. Hoprig,” Florian replied, “but I shall endeavor to merit his approval.” ”

“ Melior should divine, as she had so obviously divined, that Florian, in going to Philippe d’Orléans, was prompted by motives which discretion preferred to screen. But Florian had learned by experience that your wives very often astound you by striking the target of your inmost thinking, fair and full, with just such seemingly irrational shots of surmise. You might call it intuition or whatever else you preferred: no husband of any at all lengthy standing would be quick to call it accident. ”

“ However!”—and Janicot waved the matter aside,—“when I am beaten I acknowledge it. The disenchanted princess remains yours: and I shall have no claim upon you until”—here Janicot smiled again,—“until the great love between your wife and you has approached a somewhat more authentic fruition.”
“Monsieur Janicot,” replied Florian, “you set the noble example of confessing when one is beaten. I was very careful when we made the compact which secured me this flawlessly beautiful lady as my wife. I am no longer careful. I cannot live with her for another year, not for a month, not for a half-hour! ”