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others are certainly not true; but it is indisputable that Count Manuel grew steadily in power and wealth and proud repute. Miramon Lluagor still served him, half-amusedly, as Dom Manuel's seneschal; kings now were Manuel's co-partners; and the former swineherd had somehow become the fair and trusty cousin of emperors. And Madame Niafer, the great Count's wife, was everywhere stated, without any contradiction from her, to be daughter to the late Soldan of Barbary.

Guivric the Sage illuminated the tree which showed the glorious descent of Dame Niafer from Kaiumarth, the first of all kings, and the first to teach men to build houses: and this tree hung in the main hall of Storisende. "For even if some errors may have crept in here and there," said Dame Niafer, "it looks very well."

"But, my dear," said Manuel, "your father was not the Soldan of Barbary: instead, he was the second groom at Arnaye, and all this lineage is a preposterous fabrication."

"I said just now that some errors may have crept in here and there," assented Dame Niafer, composedly, "but the point is, that the thing really looks very well, and I do not suppose that even you deny that."

"No, I do not deny that this glowing mendacity adds to the hall's appearance."

"So now, you see for yourself!" said Niafer, triumphantly. And after that her new ancestry was never questioned.

And in the meanwhile Dom Manuel had sent messengers over land and sea to his half-sister Math at Rathgor, bidding her sell the mill for what it would fetch. She obeyed, and brought to Manuel's court her husband and their two boys, the younger of whom rose later to be Pope of Rome. Manuel gave the miller the vacant fief of Montors; and thereafter you could nowhere have found a statelier fine lady than the Countess Matthiette de Montors. She was still used to speak continually of what was becoming to people of our station in life, but it was with a large difference; and she got on with Niafer as well as could be expected, but no better.

And early in the summer of the first year of Manuel's reign (just after Dom Manuel fetched to Storisende the Sigel of Scoteia, as the spoils of his famous fight with Oriander the Swimmer), the stork brought to Niafer the first of the promised boys. For the looks of the thing, this child was named, not after the father whom Manuel had just killed, but after the Emmerick who was Manuel's nominal father: and it was this Emmerick that afterward reigned long and notably in Poictesme.

So matters went prosperously with Dom Manuel, and there was nothing to trouble his peace of mind, unless it were some feeling of responsibility for the cult of Sesphra, whose worship was now increasing everywhere among the nations. In Philistia, in particular, Sesphra was now worshipped openly in the legislative halls and churches, and all other religion, and all decency, was smothered under the rituals of Sesphra. Everywhere to the west and north his followers were delivering windy discourses and performing mad antics, and great hurt came of it all by and by. But if this secretly troubled Dom Manuel; the Count, here as elsewhere, exercised to good effect his invaluable gift for holding his tongue.

Nor did he ever speak of Freydis either, though it is recorded that when news came of the end which she had made in Teamhair under the oppression of the Druids and the satirists, Dom Manuel went silently into the Room of Ageus, and was not seen any more that day. That in such solitude he wept is improbable, for his hard vivid eyes had forgotten this way of exercise, but it is highly probable that he remembered many things, and found not all of them to his credit.

So matters went prosperously with gray Manuel; he had lofty palaces and fair woods and pastures and ease and content, and whensoever he went into battle attended by his nine lords of the Silver Stallion, his adversaries perished; he was esteemed everywhere the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue alive: to crown all which the stork brought by and by to Storisende the second girl, whom they named Dorothy, for Manuel's mother. And about this time too, came a young poet from England (Ribaut they called him, and he met an evil end at Coventry not long thereafter), bringing to Dom Manuel, where the high Count sat at supper, a goose-feather.

The Count smiled, and he twirled the thing between his fingers, and he meditated. He shrugged, and said: "Needs must. But for her ready wit, my head would have been set to dry on a silver pike. I cannot well ignore that obligation, if she, as it now seems, does not intend to ignore it."

Then he told Niafer he must go into England.

Niafer looked up from the marmalade with which she was finishing off her supper, to ask placidly, "And what does that dear yellow-haired friend of yours want with you now?"

"My dear, if I knew the answer to that question it would not be necessary for me to travel oversea."

"It is easy enough to guess, though," Dame Niafer said darkly, although, in point of fact, she too was wondering why Alianora should have sent for Manuel; "and I can quite understand how in your sandals you prefer not to have people know about such doings, and laughing at you everywhere, again."

Dom Manuel did not reply; but he sighed.

"—And if any importance whatever were attached to my opinion in this house I might be saying a few things; but, as it is, it is much more agreeable, all around, to let you go your own hard-headed way and find out by experience that what I say is true. So now, Manuel, if you do not mind, I think we had better be talking about something else a little more pleasant."

Dom Manuel still did not say anything. The time, as has been noted, was just after supper, and as the high Count and his wife sat over the remnants of this meal, a minstrel was making music for them.

"You are not very cheerful company, I must say," Niafer observed, in a while, "although I do not for a moment doubt your yellow-haired friend will find you gay enough—"

"No, Niafer, I am not happy to-night."

"Yes, and whose fault is it? I told you not to take two helpings of that beef."

"No, no, dear snip, it is not indigestion, but rather it is that music, which is plaguing me."

"Now, Manuel, how can music bother anybody! I am sure the boy plays his violin very nicely indeed, especially when you consider his age."

Said Manuel:

"Yes, but the long low sobbing of the violin, troubling as the vague thoughts begotten by that season wherein summer is not yet perished from the earth, but lingers wanly in the tattered shrines of summer, speaks of what was and of what might have been. A blind desire, the same which on warm moonlit nights was used to shake like fever in the veins of a boy whom I remember, is futilely plaguing a gray fellow with the gray wraiths of innumerable old griefs and with small stinging memories of long-dead delights. Such thirsting breeds no good for staid and aging men, but my lips are athirst for lips whose loveliness no longer exists in flesh, and I thirst for a dead time and its dead fervors to be reviving, so that young Manuel may love again.

"To-night now surely somewhere, while this music sets uncertain and probing fingers to healed wounds, an aging woman, in everything a stranger to me, is troubled just thus futilely, and she too remembers what she half forgets. 'We that of old were one, and shuddered heart to heart, with our young lips and our souls too made indivisible,'—thus she is thinking, as I think—'has life dealt candidly in leaving us to potter with half measures and to make nothing of severed lives that shrivel far apart?' Yes, she to-night is sad as I, it well may be; but I cannot rest certain of this, because there is in young love a glory so bedazzling as to prevent the lover from seeing clearly his co-worshipper, and therefore in that dear time when we served love together I learned no more of her than she of me.

"Of all my failures this is bitterest to bear, that out of so much grieving and aspiring I have gained no assured knowledge of the woman herself, but must perforce become lachrymose over such perished tinsels as her quivering red lips and shining hair! Of youth and love is there no more, then, to be won than virginal breasts and a small white belly yielded to the will of the lover, and brief drunkenness, and afterward such puzzled yearning as now dies into acquiescence, very much as the long low sobbing of that violin yonder dies into stillness now the song is done?"

So it was that gray Manuel talked in a half voice, sitting there resplendently robed in gold and crimson, and twiddling between his fingers a goose-feather.

"Yes," Niafer said, presently, "but, for my part, I think he plays very nicely indeed."

Manuel gave an abrupt slight jerking of the head. Dom Manuel laughed. "Dear snip," said he, "come, honestly now, what have you been meditating about while I talked nonsense?"

"Why, I was thinking I must remember to look over your flannels the first thing to-morrow, Manuel, for everybody knows what that damp English climate is in autumn—"

"My dearest," Manuel said, with grave conviction, "you are the archetype and flawless model of all wives."





XXXIV Farewell to Alianora

Now Dom Manuel takes ship and goes into England: and for what happened there we have no authority save the account which Dom Manuel rendered on his return to his wife.

Thus said Dom Manuel:

He went straight to Woodstock, where the King and Queen then were. At Woodstock Dom Manuel was handsomely received, and there he passed the month of September—

("Why need you stay so long, though?" Dame Niafer inquired.

"Well," Manuel explained, "one thing led to another, as it were."

"H'm!" Niafer remarked.)

He had presently a private talk with the Queen. How was she dressed? As near as Manuel recalled, she wore a green mantle fastened in front with a square fermoir of gems and wrought gold; under it, a close fitting gown of gold-diapered brocade, with tight sleeves so long that they half covered her hands, something like mitts. Her crown was of floriated trefoils surmounting a band of rubies. Of course, though, they might have been only garnets—

("And where was it that she dressed up in all this finery to talk with you in private?"

"Why, at Woodstock, naturally."

"I know it was at Woodstock, but whereabouts at Woodstock?"

"It was by a window, my dear, by a window with panes of white glass and wooden lattices and a pent covered with lead."

"Your account is very circumstantial, but where was the window?"

"Oh, now I understand you! It was in a room."

"What sort of room?"

"Well, the walls were covered with gay frescoes from Saxon history; the fireplace was covered with very handsomely carved stone dragons; and the floor was covered with new rushes. Indeed, the Queen has one of the neatest bedrooms I have ever seen."

"Ah, yes," said Niafer: "and what did you talk about during the time that you spent in your dear friend's bedroom?")

Well, he found all going well with Queen Alianora (Dom Manuel continued) except that she had not yet provided an heir for the English throne, and it was this alone which was troubling her. It was on account of this that she had sent for Count Manuel.

"It is considered not to look at all well, after three years of marriage," the Queen told him, "and people are beginning to say a number of unkind things."

"It is the common fate of queens," Dom Manuel replies, "to be exposed to the criticism of envious persons."

"No, do not be brilliant and aphoristic, Manuel, for I want you to help me more practically in this matter."

"Very willingly will I help you if I can. But how can I?"

"Why, you must assist me in getting a baby,—a boy baby, of course."

"I am willing to do all that I can, because certainly it does not look well for you to have no son to be King of England. But how can I, of all persons, help you in this affair?"

"Now, Manuel, after getting three children you surely ought to know what is necessary!"

Dom Manuel shook a gray head. "My children came from a source which is exhausted."

"That would be deplorable news if I believed it, but I am sure that if you will let me take matters in hand I can convince you to the contrary—"

"Well, I am open to conviction."

"—Although I scarcely know how to begin, because I know that you will think this hard on you—"

He took her

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