James Branch Cabell
The High Place
James Branch Cabell
[1879–1958]
The High Place
A Comedy of Disenchantment
1923
“Build on high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for horned Ashtoreth, the abomination of Zidon, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Amman.”
To
Robert Gamble Cabell III
this book, where so much more is due.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
THE END OF LONG WANTING
1. The Child Errant
2. Sayings about Puysange
3. Widowers Seek Consolation
4. Economics of an Old Race
5. Friendly Advice of Janicot
6. Philosophy of the Lower Class
7. Adjustments of the Resurrected
8. At the Top of the World
9. Misgivings of a Beginning Saint
10. Who Feasted at Brunbelois
PART TWO
THE END OF LIGHT WINNING
11. Problems of Beauty
12. Niceties of Fratricide
13. Débonnaire
14. Gods in Decrepitude
15. Dubieties of the Master
16. Some Victims of Flamberge
17. The Armory of Antan
18. Problems of Holiness
19. Locked Gates
20. Smoke Reveals Fire
PART THREE
THE END OF LEAN WISDOM
21. Of Melior Married
22. The Wives of Florian
23. The Collyn in the Pot
24. Marie-Claire
25. The Gander That Sang
26. Husband and Wife
27. The Forethought of Hoprig
28. Highly Ambiguous
29. The Wonder Words
30. The Errant Child
PART ONE
THE END OF LONG WANTING
“Lever un tel obstacle est à moy peu de chose.
Le Ciel défend, de vray, certains contentemens;
Mais on trouve avec luy des accommodemens.”
1. The Child Errant
PROBABLY Florian would never have gone into the Forest of Acaire had he not been told, over and over again, to keep out of it. Obedience to those divinely set in authority was in 1698 still modish: none the less, such orders, so insistently repeated to any normal boy of ten, even to a boy not born of the restless house of Puysange, must make the venture at one time or another obligatory.
Moreover, this October afternoon was of the sun-steeped lazy sort which shows the world as oversatisfied with the done year’s achievements, of the sort which, when you think about it so long, arouses a dim dissent from such unambitious aims. It was not that the young Prince de Lisuarte—to give Florian his proper title,—was in any one point dissatisfied with the familiar Poictesme immediately about him: he liked it well enough. It was only that he preferred another place, which probably existed somewhere, and which was not familiar or even known to him. It was only that you might—here one approximates to Florian’s vague thinking, as he lay yawning under the little tree from the East,—that you might find more excitement in some place which strove toward larger upshots than the ripening of grains and fruits, in a world which did not every autumn go to sleep as if the providing of food-stuffs and the fodder for people’s cattle were enough.
To-day, with October’s temperate sunlight everywhere, the sleek country of Poictesme was inexpressibly asleep, wrapped in a mellowing haze. The thronged trees of Acaire, as Florian now saw them just beyond that low red wall, seemed to have golden powder scattered over them, a powder which they stayed too motionless to shake off. Yet logic told him these still trees most certainly veiled wild excitements of some sort, for otherwise people would not be at you, over and over again, with exhortations to keep out of that forest.
Nobody was watching. There was nothing in especial to do, for Florian had now read all the stories in this curious new book, by old Monsieur Perrault of the Academy, which Florian’s father had last month fetched back from Paris: and, besides, nobody at Storisende had, for as much as a week, absolutely told Florian not to leave the gardens. So he adventured: and with the achievement of the adventure came a strengthening of Florian’s growing conviction that his elders were in their notions, as a rule, illogical.
For in Acaire, even when you went as far as Brunbelois, the boy found nothing hurtful. It was true that, had he not at the beginning of his wandering met with the small bright-haired woman who guided him thereafter, he might have made mistakes: and mistakes, as Melusine acknowledged, might have turned out awkwardly in approaching the high place, since monsters have to be handled in just the right way. She explained to Florian, on that warm long October afternoon, that sympathy is the main requisite, because the main trouble with such monsters as the bleps and the strycophanes and the calcar (she meant only the gray one, of course) is that each is unique, and in consequence lonely.
The hatred men feel for every ravening monster that wears fangs and scales, she pointed out, is due to its apparel being not quite the sort of thing to which men are accustomed: whereas people were wholly used to having soldiers and prelates and statesmen ramping about in droves, and so viewed these without any particular wonder or disapproval. All that was needed, then, was to extend to the bleps and the strycophanes a little of the confidence and admiration which men everywhere else accorded to the destroyers of mankind; and you would soon see that these glittering creatures—as well as the tawny eale, and the leucrocotta, with its golden mane and whiskers, and the opal-colored tarandus,—were a great deal nicer to look at than the most courted and run-after people, and much less apt to destroy anybody outside of their meal hours.
In any event, it was Melusine who had laid an enchantment upon the high place in the midst of the wood, and who had set the catoblepas here and the mantichora yonder to prevent the lifting of her spell, so that Florian could not possibly have found a better guide than Melusine. She was kindly, you saw, but not very happy: and from the first, Florian liked and, in some sort, pitied her. So he rode with her confidingly, upon the back of the queerest steed that any boy of ten had ever been privileged to look at, not to speak of riding on it: and the two talked lazily and friendlily as they went up and up, and always upward, along the windings of the green way which long ago had been a road.
As they went, the body of this sweet-smelling Melusine was warm and soft against his body, for Melusine was not imprisoned in hard-feeling clothes such as were worn by your governesses and aunts. The monsters stationed along the way drew back as Melusine passed; and some purred ingratiatingly, like gigantic kettles, and others made obeisances: and you met no other living creatures except three sheep that lay in the roadway asleep and very dingy with the dust of several hundred years. No self-respecting monster would have touched them. Thus Florian and Melusine came through the forest without any hindrance or trouble, to the cleft in the mountain tops where the castle stood beside a lake: and Florian liked the stillness of all things in this high place, where the waters of the lake were without a ripple, and the tall grass and so many mist-white flowers were motionless.
He liked it even more when Melusine led him through such rooms in the castle as took his fancy. He was glad that Melusine did not mind when Florian confessed the sleeping princess—in the room hung everywhere with curtains upon which people hunted a tremendous boar, and stuck spears through one another, and burst forth into peculiarly solid-looking yellow flames,—seemed to him even more lovely than was Melusine. They were very much alike, though, the boy said: and Melusine told him that was not unnatural, since Melior was her sister. And then, when Florian asked questions, Melusine told him also of the old unhappiness that had been in this place, and of the reasons which had led her to put an enduring peacefulness upon her parents and her sister and all the other persons who slept here enchanted.