And Coth found all this jewelry and tortured stone-work, as a piece of art, to be wholly admirable, if you cared for such kickshaws. But as a tomb he considered it to lack at least one essential feature, in that it was empty.
Yet to most persons the emptiness of the great tomb was its peculiar sanctity. This spacious and proud glittering void was, to most persons, a perpetual reminder that Dom Manuel had ascended into heaven while yet alive, uncorrupted by the ignominy of death, and taking with him every heroic bone and bit of flesh, and every tiniest sinew, unmarred. That miracle—no more, to be sure, than the great Redeemer’s just due,—most satisfactorily and most awfully accounted for the lack of any corpse, as surely as the lack of a corpse was the firm proof of the miracle; sublime verities here interlocked: and that miracle had been set above cavil when it was first revealed, by Heaven’s wisdom, through the unsullied innocence of a little child, lest in this world, men and women being what they are, by any scoffer the testimony of an adult evangelist might be suspected.
Coth, after hearing these axioms,—so unshakably established as axioms during the seven years of Coth’s absence,—would look meditatively at his young Jurgen, to whose extreme youth and comparative innocence this revelation had been accorded. The boy was now nearing manhood, he fell short in many respects of the virtues appropriate to an evangelist, and he confessed to remembering very faintly now that tremendous experience of his infancy. That hardly mattered, though, Coth would reflect, when Poictesme at large was so industriously preserving and embroidering the tale which the dear brat had brought down from Upper Morven to explain away an overnight truancy from home.
“There is but one Manual,” Coth would remark, to himself, “and—of all persons!—my Jurgen is his prophet. That kickshaw creed seems to content everybody, now that the rogue no longer bothers to provide an excuse for staying out all night.”
Chapter XXVIII. Fond Motto of a Patriot
Everywhere, indeed, during the while of Coth’s vain adventuring after the real Manuel, the legend had grown steadily. Coth found it wholly maddening to hear of the infallible and perfect Redeemer with whom he had formerly lived in daily converse of a painstakingly quarrelsome and uncivil nature: and he found too that, of his confreres of the Silver Stallion who yet remained in Poictesme, Ninzian and Donander at least were beginning to lie about Manuel with as pious a lack of restraint as anybody. Guivric the Sage, of course, would chillily assent to whatsoever the best-thought-of people affirmed, because the self-centered old knave did not ever really bother about what other persons thought: whereas Holden and Anavalt sought, rather markedly, to turn the conversation to other topics. These aging champions had, in fine, encountered, in this legend as to their former glories and privileges, an unconquerable adversary with which they, each according to his nature, were of necessity compromising.
For Manuel the great Redeemer, who had first carnally redeemed Poictesme in battle with the Northmen, and later had redeemed Poictesme in more exalted fields, when at his passing he had taken all his people’s sins upon his proud gray head,—this Manuel was to return and was to bring again with him the golden age which, everybody now asserted, had existed under Manuel’s ruling of Poictesme. That was the sweet and reason-drugging allure of the legend, that was the prediction transmitted by Coth’s young scapegrace, who nowadays had averted so whole-heartedly from prophecy to petticoats. There was no sense in arguing against such vaticinatory fanfaronade, since it promised to all inefficient persons that which they preferred to believe in. Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain by electing for peculiarity among one’s fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
Even Coth saw that. So the bald realist looked over his cellar and the later produce among his vassals in the way of likely girls; he gave such orders as seemed best in the light of both inspections; and he settled down as comfortably as might be to the task of making old bones in this land of madmen. He might at least look forward to the requisite creature comforts to be derived from these bins and amiable spry bedfellows. His Azra was no more trying than most wives; and his young Jurgen, after all, might turn out better than seemed probable.
So Coth in the end let maudlin imbeciles proclaim whatsoever they elected about the glorious stay upon earth and the second coming of Manuel the Redeemer, and Coth answered them at worst with inarticulate growlings. But that the old bear’s love for Poictesme remained unchanged was evinced by the zeal with which he now caused his two homes superabundantly to be adorned with the arms of Poictesme, so that at every turn your eye fell upon the rampant silver stallion and the land’s famous motto, Mundus vult decipi. Such patriotism showed, said everybody, that, for all his fault-finding, Coth’s heart was in the right place.
Chapter XXIX. The Grumbler’s Progress
And the tale is still of Coth, telling how he avoided Niafer’s court, and the decorums and the pieties which were in fashion there, and how he debauched reasonably in his own citadels.
He fought no more, but he did not lack for other pleasures. He hunted in the Forest of Acaire; and, in his rich coat of fox fur, he rode frequently with hounds and falcons about the plains of the Roigne. He maintained an excellent pit in which wild boars and bears contended and killed one another for his diversion. When the weather was warm he drank, and he amused himself at dice and backgammon, in his well-ordered orchard: in winter he sat snug under the carved hood of his huge fireplace; and it was thus that for his health’s sake he was cozily cupped and bled, while the Alderman of St. Didol drank quietly and insatiably.
Then, too, it amused Coth now and then to execute a vassal or so upon his handsome gallows,—that notorious gallows supported with four posts, although his rank as Alderman entitled him to only two posts,—because this bit of arrogance, in the matter of those two extra posts, was a continuous great source of anger to his nominal sovereign, Madame Niafer. But his main recreation, after all, Coth found in emulating those very ancient and most famous monarchs Jupiter and David in a constant change of women; and the fine girls of Poictesme remained as always a lively joy to him.
And daily, too, the Alderman of St. Didol squabbled with his wife and son; and, since he could discover profuse grounds everywhere for faultfinding, was comfortable enough.
To his sardonic bent it was at this period amusing to note how staidly Poictesme thrived by virtue of the land’s faith in Poictesme’s Redeemer, who had removed all troubles and obligations in the past, and who by and by would be coming again, no doubt to wipe similarly clean the moral slate; so that there was no real need to worry about the future, nor about any little personal misdemeanor (which had not become embarrassingly public), since this would of course be included in the general amnesty when Manuel returned to take charge of his people’s affairs.
And yet there was another and more troubling side. The younger, here and there, were beginning, within moderation, to emulate that Manuel who had never lived. For Coth saw that too. He saw young persons—here and there,—displaying traits and customs strange if not virtually unknown to the old reprobate’s varied experience. Civility, for one thing, was rather sickeningly pandemic: you saw fine strapping lads, differing in opinion about this, that or the other, who, instead of resorting sensibly to a duel, stopped—who positively sat down side by side,—to examine each the other’s point of view, and after that, as often as not, talked themselves out of fighting at all. That was because of the fame of Manuel’s uniform civility, which, indeed, the rogue had displayed, and had made excellent profit of.