50.Indiscretion of a Bailiff
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NOW the tale tells that upon the day of the birth of the first son begotten by Count Emmerick, in lawful marriage and with the aid of his own wife Radegonde, there was such a drinking of healths and toasts as never before was known at Storisende. The tale speaks of a most notable banquet, at which twelve dishes were served to every two persons, with a great plenty of the best wine and beer. In the minstrels’ gallery were fiddlers, trumpeters and drummers, those who tossed tambourines, and those who played upon the flute. Ten poets discoursed meanwhile of the feats of Dom Manuel, and presented in even livelier colors the impendent achievements of the Redeemer’s second coming into Poictesme with a ferocious heavenly cortège. And meanwhile also the company drank, and the intoxication of verse was abetted with red wine and white.
Since the poems were rather long, all this resulted in an entertainment from which the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra went homeward hiccoughing and even more than usually benevolent, and without any consciousness ofthat misstep which had imperiled his continued stay on earth.
For Ninzian of Yair and Upper Ardra had not wholly broken with the heroic cenatory ways of the years wherein Dom Manuel ruled over Poictesme. This seemed the more regrettable because Ninzian, always a pious and philanthropic person, had otherwise become with age appropriately staid. He in theory approved of every one of the reforms enacted everywhere by the Countess Niafer, and confirmed by the Countess Radegonde; and, in practice, Ninzian was of course a staunch supporter of his revered and intimate associate, St. Holmendis, in all the salutary crusades against elves and satyrs and trolls and other uncanonical survivals from unorthodox mythologies, and against the free-thinking of persons who questioned the legend of Manuel, and in the holy man’s hunting down of such demons and stringing up of such heretics, and in all other devout labors. But there, nevertheless, was no disputing that the benevolent and florid bailiff of Upper Ardra had kept a taint of the robustious social customs of Dom Manuel’s worldly heyday.
It followed that Ninzian evaded none of the toasts at Count Emmerick’s banquet and left no friend unpledged. Instead, sleek Ninzian drank the wines of Orléans, of Anjou and of Burgundy; of Auxerre and Beaune, and of St. Jean and St. Porçain. He drank Malvoisin, and Montrose, and Vernage, and Runey.He drank the wines of Greece, both Patras and Farnese; he drank spiced beers; he drank muscatel; and he drank hypocras. He did not ignore the cider nor the pear cider; to the sweet white sparkling wine of Volnay he confessed, and he exhibited, an especial predilection; and he drank copiously, also, of the Alsatian sherry and of the Hungarian tokay.
Thereafter Ninzian went homeward with a pleasurable at-randomness, for which—in a so liberal contributor to every pious cause and persecution,—appropriate allowances were made by St. Holmendis and everybody else except one person only. Ninzian was married.