Figures of Earth. James Branch Cabell

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      The magician drew closer about him his old threadbare dressing-gown, and he desisted from his enchantments, and he put aside a small unfinished design, which scuttled into the fireplace, whimpering. And Manuel perceived that the dreadful prince of the seven madnesses had the appearance of the mild-mannered stranger who had given Manuel the charmed sword.

      "Ah, yes, it was good of you to come so soon," says Miramon Lluagor, rearing back his head, and narrowing his gentle and sombre eyes, as the magician looked at them down the sides of what little nose he had. "Yes, and your young friend, too, is very welcome. But you boys must be quite worn out, after toiling up this mountain, so do you sit down and have a cup of wine before I surrender my dear wife."

      Says Manuel, sternly, "But what is the meaning of all this?"

      "The meaning and the upshot, clearly," replied the magician, "is that, since you have the charmed sword Flamberge, and since the wearer of Flamberge is irresistible, it would be nonsense for me to oppose you."

      "But, Miramon, it was you who gave me the sword!"

      Miramon rubbed his droll little nose for a while, before speaking. "And how else was I to get conquered? For, I must tell you, Manuel, it is a law of the Léshy that a magician cannot surrender his prey unless the magician be conquered. I must tell you, too, that when I carried off Gisèle I acted, as I by and by discovered, rather injudiciously."

      "Now, by holy Paul and Pollux! I do not understand this at all, Miramon."

      "Why, Manuel, you must know she was a very charming girl, and in appearance just the type that I had always fancied for a wife. But perhaps it is not wise to be guided entirely by appearances. For I find now that she has a strong will in her white bosom, and a tireless tongue in her glittering head, and I do not equally admire all four of these possessions."

      "Still, Miramon, if only a few months back your love was so great as to lead you into abducting her—"

      The prince of the seven madnesses said gravely:

      "Love, as I think, is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance. They that aspire to possess love utterly, fall into folly. This is forbidden: you cannot. The lover, beholding that fusing move as a golden-hued goddess, accessible, kindly and priceless, wooes and ill-fatedly wins all the substance. The golden-hued shadow dims in the dawn of his married life, dulled with content, and the shadow vanishes. So there remains, for the puzzled husband's embracing, flesh which is fair and dear, no doubt, yet is flesh such as his; and talking and talking and talking; and kisses in all ways desirable. Love, of a sort, too remains, but hardly the love that was yesterday's."

      Now the unfinished design came out of the fireplace, and climbed up Miramon's leg, still faintly whimpering. He looked at it meditatively, then twisted off the creature's head and dropped the fragments into his waste-basket.

      Miramon sighed. He said:

      "This is the cry of all husbands that now are or may be hereafter—'What has become of the girl that I married? and how should I rightly deal with this woman whom somehow time has involved in my doings? Love, of a sort, now I have for her, but not the love that was yesterday's—'"

      While Miramon spoke thus, the two lads were looking at each other blankly: for they were young, and their understanding of this matter was as yet withheld.

      Then said Miramon:

      "Yes, he is wiser that shelters his longing from any such surfeit. Yes, he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the substance, wisely regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow which, if you grasp at it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will follow, gilding all life with its glory, and keeping always one woman young and most fair and most wise, and unwon; and keeping you always never contented, but armed with a self-respect that no husband manages quite to retain in the face of being contented. No, for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance, fused for that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest pleasure from either alone, but hardly from these two united."

      "Well," Manuel conceded, "all this may be true; but I never quite understood hexameters, and so I could not ever see the good of talking in them."

      "I always do that, Manuel, when I am deeply affected. It is, I suppose, the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment that inhibitions are removed, for when I think about the impending severance from my dear wife I more or less lose control of myself—You see, she takes an active interest in my work, and that does not do with a creative artist in any line. Oh, dear me, no, not for a moment!" says Miramon, forlornly.

      "But how can that be?" Niafer asked him.

      "As all persons know, I design the dreams of men. Now Gisèle asserts that people have enough trouble in real life, without having to go to sleep to look for it—"

      "Certainly that is true," says Niafer.

      "So she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and edifying dreams and glad dreams. She says you must give tired persons what they most need; and is emphatic about the importance of everybody's sleeping in a wholesome atmosphere. So I have not been permitted to design a fine nightmare or a creditable terror—nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no sea-serpents or krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a really free hand—for months and months: and my art suffers. Then, as for other dreams, of a more roguish nature—"

      "What sort of dreams can you be talking about, I wonder, Miramon?"

      The magician described what he meant. "Such dreams also she has quite forbidden," he added, with a sigh.

      "I see," said Manuel: "and now I think of it, it is true that I have not had a dream of that sort for quite a while."

      "No man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. And here again my art suffers, for my designs in this line were always especially vivid and effective, and pleased the most rigid. Then, too, Gisèle is always doing and telling me things for my own good—In fine, my lads, my wife takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my clutches," said Miramon, fretfully.

      "It is difficult to explain to you, Manuel, just now, but after you have been married to Gisèle for a while you will comprehend without any explaining."

      "Now, Miramon, I marvel to see a great magician controlled by a woman who is in his power, and who can, after all, do nothing but talk."

      Miramon for some while considered Manuel, rather helplessly. "Unmarried men do wonder about that," said Miramon. "At all events, I will summon her, and you can explain how you have conquered me, and then you can take her away and marry her yourself, and Heaven help you!"

      "But shall I explain that it was you who gave me the resistless sword?"

      "No, Manuel: no, you should be candid within more rational limits. For you are now a famous champion, that has crowned with victory a righteous cause for which many stalwart knights and gallant gentlemen have made the supreme sacrifice, because they knew that in the end the right must conquer. Your success thus represents the working out of a great moral principle, and to explain the practical minutiae of these august processes is not always quite respectable. Besides, if Gisèle thought I wished to get rid of her she would most certainly resort to comments of which I prefer not to think."

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