49.They of Nointel
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THUS, then, it was that, in the November following Guivric’s encounter with the Sylan, Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, to become yet another convert to the great legend of Manuel.
Kerin was converted almost instantaneously. For when the news of Kerin’s return was public, Holmendis soon came that way, performing very devastating miracles en route among the various evil and ambiguous spirits which yet lurked in the rural districts of Poictesme. The saint was now without any mercy imprisoning all such detected immortals right and left, in tree-trunks and dry wells and consecrated bottles, and condemning them in such exiguous sad quarters to await the holy Morrow of Judgment. With Holmendis, as his coadjutor in these praiseworthy labors, traveled the appearance of Guivric the Sage.
And when St. Holmendis and Glaum-Without-Bones (in Guivric’s stolen body) had talked to Kerin of Nointel about the great cult of Manuel the Redeemer which had sprung up during Kerin’s pursuit of knowledgeunderground, and had showed him the holy sepulchre at Storisende and Manuel’s bright jewel-encrusted effigy, and had told about Manuel’s ascent into heaven, then old Kerin only blinked, with mild, considerate, tired eyes.
“It is very likely,” Kerin said, “since it was Manuel who gave to us of Poictesme our law that all things must go by tens forever.”
“Now, what,” said Glaum, in open but wholly amiable surprise, “has that to do with it?”
“I have learned that a number of other persons have entered alive into heaven. I allude of course to Enoch, whose smell the cherubim found so objectionable that they recoiled from him a distance of five thousand, three hundred and eighty miles. I allude also to Elijah; to Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; to Hiram, King of Tyre; to Ebed Melek the Ethiop; to Jabez, the son of Prince Jehuda; to Bathia, the daughter of a Pharaoh; to Sarah, the daughter of Asher; and to Yoshua, the son of Levi, who did not go in by the gateway, but climbed over the wall. And I consider it quite likely that Dom Manuel would elect to make of this company, as he did of everything else, a tenth.”
Thereafter Holmendis said, rather dubiously, “Well—!” And Holmendis talked again of Manuel....
“That too seems likely enough,” Kerin agreed. “I have learned that these messengers from the gods toour race upon earth are sent with commendable regularity every six hundred years. The Enoch of whom I was speaking but a moment since was the first of them, in the six-hundredth year after Adam. Then, as the happy upshot of a love affair between a Mongolian empress and a rainbow, came into this world Fo-hi, six hundred years after Enoch’s living; and six hundred years after the days of Fo-hi was Brighou sent to the Hindoos. At the same interval of time or thereabouts have since come Zoroaster to the Persians, and Thoth the Thrice Powerful to the Egyptians, and Moses to the Jews, and Lao Tseu to the men of China, and Paul of Tarsus to the Gentiles, and Mohammed to the men of Islam. Mohammed flourished just six hundred years before our Manuel. Yes, Messire Holmendis, it seems likely enough that, here too, Manuel would elect to make a tenth.”
Then pious gentle old Glaum-Without-Bones began to speak with joy and loving reverence about the glories of Manuel’s second coming....
“No doubt, dear Guivric: for I have learned that all the great captains are coming again,” said Kerin, almost wearily. “There is Arthur, there is Ogier, there is Charlemagne, there is Barbarossa, there is Finn, the son of Cumhal,—there is in every land, in fine, a foreknowledge of that hero who will return at his appointed time and bring with him all glory and prosperity. Prince Siddartha also is to return, and Saoshyant,and Alexander of Macedon, and Satan too, for that matter, is expected to return, for his last fling, a little before the holy Morrow of Judgment. Here again, therefore, I consider it quite likely that Dom Manuel may elect to make a tenth.”
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 over-familiar with the sublime truths about Manuel the Redeemer some while before he heard them; and so, was hearing them, now at long last, without the appropriate upliftedness and flow of spirits. Kerin merely accepted these tremendous truths; and seemed upon the whole to be more interested in life’s unimportant, superficial, familiar tasks, and in his food.
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 “theintelligentsia, 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 Saraïde 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 Osiris and of several other gods and of all elephants,—and he deduced that his son would in some way or another rise to worldly preëminence.
And that inference proved to be reasonably true, since it was this Fauxpas de Nointel who led Count Emmerick’s troops for him in the evil days of Maugis d’Aigremont’s rebellion, and held Poictesme for Manuel’s son until aid came from the Comte de la Fôret. For twelve years at least this son of Kerin was thus preëminent 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 Fôret, and the granddaughter of Dom Manuel, and who builded at Nointel the great castle with seven towers which still endures.
BOOK EIGHTTHE CANDID FOOTPRINT“They have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed.”—Psalms, lxxxix, 51.
BOOK EIGHTTHE CANDID FOOTPRINT“They have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed.”—Psalms, lxxxix, 51.
BOOK EIGHT
THE CANDID FOOTPRINT
“They have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed.”
—Psalms, lxxxix, 51.