32.Time Gnaws at All
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THEN Emmerick came of age, and Madame Niafer’s rule was over, men said, because the Count would be swayed in all things by his cousin, the Bishop Ayrart of Montors, the same that afterward was Pope.
“The young church rat drives out the old one,” said Coth. “Now limping Niafer must learn to do without a night-light and to sleep without a halo on her pillow.”
But Ayrart’s supremacy was not for long, and Holy Holmendis remained about the court, after all, because, at just this time, lean Holden the Brave appeared at Storisende with a beautiful young gray-eyed stranger whom he introduced as the widow of Elphànor, King of Kings. People felt that for this Radegonde thus to be surviving her husband by more than thirteen centuries was a matter meritorious of explanation, but neither she nor Holden offered any.
The history of the love which had been between Radegonde and Holden is related elsewhere[2]: at thistime it remained untold. But now, at this love’s ending, Radegonde found favor in the small greedy eyes of Count Emmerick, and she married him, nor was there ever at any season thereafter during the lifetime of Radegonde a question as to what person, howsoever flightily, ruled over Poictesme and Emmerick. And Radegonde—after a very prettily worded but frank proviso as to the divine right of princes, which rendered them and their wives responsible to Heaven directly, and to nobody else, as she felt sure dear Messire Holmendis quite understood,—Radegonde thereafter favored Holmendis and his wonder-working reforms, among the appropriate class of people, because she considered that his halo was distinctly decorative, and that a practicing saint about the court lent it, as she phrased the matter, an air.
2.See note upon page 145.
2.See note upon page 145.
2.See note upon page 145.
Coth heard of these things; and he nodded his great dome-shaped head complacently enough. “A tree may be judged by its fruit. Now in England Dom Manuel’s long-legged bastard by Queen Alianora has returned his young wife to the nursery. He is to-day, they tell me,—in the approved fashion of all sons,—junketing about foreign courts with the Lord of Bulmer’s daughter. He, in brief, while the Barons steal England from him, is intent upon begetting his own bastards—”
“But you also, my husband—”
“Do you stop deafening me with your talk about irrelevant matters! In Philistia, Dom Manuel’s mostprecious bantling by Queen Freydis is working every manner of pagan iniquity, and has brought about the imprisonment, in infamous Antan, of his own mother, after having lived with her for some while in incest—”
“Nevertheless—”
“Azra, you have, as I tell you for your own good, a sad habit, and a very ill-bred habit also, of interrupting people, and that habit is quite insufferable. A tree, I repeat to you, may be judged by its fruit! Everybody knows that. Now, in our Poictesme, the increase of Dom Manuel’s body has, thus far, produced two strumpets and a guzzling cuckold—”
“But, even so—”
“You are talking nonsense. A tree, I say to you, may be judged by its fruit! I consider this exhibit very eloquently convincing as to the true nature of our Redeemer.”
Azra now answered nothing. And Coth fell to looking at his motto, rather gloomily.
“It was not that I meant,” he said, heroically, by and by, “to be rude, my dear. But I do hate a fool, and, in particular, an obstinate fool.”
Here too it must be recorded that upon the night of Radegonde’s marriage old Holden had the ill taste to die. That it was by his own hand, nobody questioned, but the affair was hushed up: and Count Emmerick’s married life thus started with gratifyingly less scandal than it culminated in.
Coth heard of this thing also. He looked at his motto, he recalled the love which he had borne for Holden in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody: and he mildly wondered that Holden, at his age, should still be clinging to the fallacy that one wench was much more desirable than another. By and large, thought Coth, they had but one use, for which any one of them would serve, if you still cared for such kickshaws. For himself, he was growing abstemious; and as often as not, found it rather a nuisance when any of his vassals married, and the Alderman of St. Didol was expected to do his seignorial duty by the new made wife. Things everywhere were dwindling and deteriorating.
Even the great Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was wearing away, thus steadily, under the malice and greed of time. Donander of Évre was to-day the only one of Manuel’s barons who yet rode about the world, now and then, in search of good fighting and fine women. All the best of the fellowship were gone from life: the hypocrites and the fools alone remained, Coth estimated modestly. For he and that boy Donander were, at least, not hypocrites....
And very often, too, Coth would look at his wife Azra, and would remember the girl that she had been in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody. He rather liked her now. It was a felt loss that she no longer had the spirit to quarrel withanything like the fervor of their happier days: not for two years or more had Azra flung a really rousing taunt or even a dinner plate in his direction: and Coth pitied the poor woman’s folly in for an instant bothering about that young scoundrel of a Jurgen, who had set up as a poet, they said, and—in the company, one heard, of a grand duchess,—was rampaging everywhither about Italy, with never a word for his parents. Coth, now, did not worry over such ingratitude at all: not less than twenty times a day he pointed out to his wife that he, for one, never wasted a thought upon the lecherous runagate.
His wife would smile at him, sadly: and after old Coth had been particularly abusive of Jurgen, she would, without speaking, stroke her husband’s knotted, stubby, splotched hand, or his tense and just not withdrawing cheek, or she would tender one or another utterly uncalled-for caress, quite as though this illogical and broken-spirited creature thought Coth to be in some sort of trouble. The woman, though, had never understood him....
Then Azra died. Coth was thus left alone. It seemed to him a strange thing that the Coth who had once been a fearless champion and a crowned emperor and a contender upon equal terms with the High Gods, should be locked up in this quiet room, weeping like a small, punished, frightened child.