Jurgen - James Branch Cabell (reading a book TXT) 📗

did not address me thus familiarly, since you and I have omitted the formality of an introduction; and in the absence of any joint acquaintances are unlikely ever to meet properly.”

“I have no herald handy, for I travel incognito. However, I am that Jurgen who recently made himself Emperor of Noumaria, King of Eubonia, Prince of Cocaigne, and Duke of Logreus; and of whom you have doubtless heard.”

“Why, to be sure!” says she, patting her hair straight. “And who would have anticipated meeting your highness in such a place!”

“One says ‘majesty’ to an emperor, my dear. It is a detail, of course: but in my position one has to be a little exigent.”

“I perfectly comprehend, your majesty; and indeed I might have divined your rank from your lovely clothes. I can but entreat you to overlook my unintentional breach of etiquette: and I make bold to add that a kind heart reveals the splendor of its graciousness through the interest which your majesty has just evinced in my disastrous history.”

“Upon my word,” thinks Jurgen, “but in this flow of words I seem to recognize my father’s imagination when in anger.”

Then Florimel told Jurgen of her horrible awakening in the grave, and of what had befallen her hands and feet there, the while that against her will she fed repugnantly, destroying first her kindred and then the neighbors. This done, she had arisen.

“For the cattle still lived, and that troubled me. When I had put an end to this annoyance, I climbed into the church belfry, not alone, for one went with me of whom I prefer not to talk; and at midnight I sounded the bell so that all who heard it would sicken and die. And I wept all the while, because I knew that when everything had been destroyed which I had known in my first life in the flesh, I would be compelled to go into new lands, in search of the food which alone can nourish me, and I was always sincerely attached to my home. So it was, your majesty, that I forever relinquished my sewing, and became a lovely peril, a flashing desolation, and an evil which smites by night, in spite of my abhorrence of irregular hours: and what I do I dislike extremely, for it is a sad fate to become a vampire, and still to sympathize with your victims, and particularly with their poor mothers.”

So Jurgen comforted Florimel, and he put his arm around her.

“Come, come!” he said, “but I will see that your vacation passes pleasantly. And I intend to deal fairly with you, too.”

Then he glanced sidewise at his shadow, and whispered a suggestion which caused Florimel to sigh. “By the terms of my doom,” said she, “at no time during the nine lives of the cat can I refuse. Still, it is a comfort you are the Emperor of Noumaria and have a kind heart.”

“Oh, and a many other possessions, my dear! and I again assure you that I intend to deal fairly with you.”

So Florimel conducted Jurgen, through the changeless twilight of Barathum, like that of a gray winter afternoon, to a quiet cleft by the Sea of Blood, which she had fitted out very cosily in imitation of her girlhood home; and she lighted a candle, and made him welcome to her cleft. And when Jurgen was about to enter it he saw that his shadow was following him into the vampire’s home.

“Let us extinguish this candle!” says Jurgen, “for I have seen so many flames today that my eyes are tired.”

So Florimel extinguished the candle, with a goodwill that delighted Jurgen. And now they were in utter darkness, and in the dark nobody can see what is happening. But that Florimel now trusted Jurgen and his Noumarian claims was evinced by her very first remark.

“I was in the beginning suspicious of your majesty,” said Florimel, “because I had always heard that every emperor carried a magnificent sceptre, and you then displayed nothing of the sort. But now, somehow, I do not doubt you any longer. And of what is your majesty thinking?”

“Why, I was reflecting, my dear,” says Jurgen, “that my father imagines things very satisfactorily.”

XXXVIII As to Applauded Precedents

Afterward Jurgen abode in Hell, and complied with the customs of that country. And the tale tells that a week or it might be ten days after his meeting with Florimel, Jurgen married her, without being at all hindered by his having three other wives. For the devils, he found, esteemed polygamy, and ranked it above mere skill at torturing the damned, through a literal interpretation of the saying that it is better to marry than to burn.

“And formerly,” they told Jurgen, “you could hardly come across a marriage anywhere that was not hallmarked ‘made in Heaven’: but since we have been at war with Heaven we have quite taken away that trade from our enemies. So you may marry here as much as you like.”

“Why, then,” says Jurgen, “I shall marry in haste, and repeat at leisure. But can one obtain a divorce here?”

“Oh, no,” said they. “We trafficked in them for a while, but we found that all persons who obtained divorces through our industry promptly thanked Heaven they were free at last. In the face of such ingratitude we gave over that profitless trade, and now there is a manufactory, for specialties in men’s clothing, upon the old statutory grounds.”

“But these makeshifts are unsatisfactory, and I wish to know, in confidence, what do you do in Hell when there is no longer any putting up with your wives.”

The devils all blushed. “We would prefer not to tell you,” said they, “for it might get to their ears.”

“Now do I perceive,” said Jurgen, “that Hell is pretty much like any other place.”

So Jurgen and the lovely vampire were duly married. First Jurgen’s nails were trimmed, and the parings were given to Florimel. A broomstick was laid before them,