15.Disastrous Rage of Miramon
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NOW also, when this eighth bright bee had joined its fellows in the Pleiades, in that same instant Miramon Lluagor, as he stood appalled in his ivory tower, was aware of a touch upon his forehead, as if a damp sponge were passing over it. Then he perceived that, with the petulant voicing of his damnable wife’s desire, he had forthwith forgotten the secret of his preëminence.
Something he could yet recall, they say, of the magic of the Purin and the cast stones, of the Horse and the Bull of the Water, and most of the lore of the Apsarasas and the Faidhin remained to him. He could still make shift, he knew, to control the roving Lamboyo, to build the fearful bridge of the White Ladies, or to contrive the dance of the Korred. He retained his communion with Necksa and Paralda, those sovereign Elementaries. He kept his mastery of the Shedeem who devastate, of the Shehireem who terrify, and of the Mazikeen who destroy. Nor had he lost touch with the Stewards of Heaven,—of whom at this period Och had the highest power and was customarily summonedby Miramon Lluagor, for a brief professional consultation, every Sunday morning at sunrise.
But such accomplishments, as Miramon despairingly knew, were the stock in trade of mere hedge wizards, they were the rudiments of any fairly competent sorcerer anywhere: and that supreme secret which had made Miramon Lluagor the master of all dreams was gone away from him completely.
He was very angry. He was the angrier for that he saw, just for an instant, a sort of frightened and bewildered remorse in his wife’s foolish face, and he desperately foreknew himself to be upon the brink of comforting her.
“Accursed woman!” Miramon cried out, “now indeed has your common-sense completed what your nagging began! This is the doom of all artists that have to do with well-conducted women. Truly has it been said that the marriage-bed is the grave of art. Well, I have put up with much from you, but this settles it, and I will not put up with your infatuation for a reputable and common-sense way of living, and I wish you were in the middle of next week!”
With that he caught the soiled scouring-rag from the hand of Gisèle, and he slapped at one of the remaining bees, and he brushed it from the black cross. And this bee departed as the other had done.