Manuel looked at Alianora for a considerable while, before speaking. "My dear, you are, as I have always told you, an unusually fine looking and intelligent girl. And yes, you are a princess, of course, though you are no longer the Unattainable Princess: that makes a difference certainly--But, over and above all this, there was never anybody like Niafer, and it would be nonsense to pretend otherwise."

The Princess said: "I wonder at myself. You are schooled in strange sorceries unknown to the Apsarasas, there is no questioning that, after the miracles you wrought with Helmas and Ferdinand: even so, I too have a neat hand at magic, and it is not right for you to be treating me as though I were the dirt under your feet. And I endure it! It is that which puzzles me, it makes me wonder at myself, and my sole comfort is that, at any rate, this wonderful Niafer of yours is dead and done with."

Manuel sighed. "Yes, Niafer is dead, and these images also are dead things, and both these facts continually trouble me. Nothing can be done about Niafer, I suppose, but if only I could give some animation to these images I think the geas upon me would be satisfied."

"Such a desire is blasphemous, Manuel, for the Eternal Father did no more than that with His primal sculptures in Eden."

Dom Manuel blinked his vivid blue eyes as if in consideration. "Well, but," he said, gravely, "but if I am a child of G.o.d it is only natural, I think, that I should inherit the tastes and habits of my Father. No, it is not blasphemous, I think, to desire to make an animated and lively figure, somewhat more admirable and significant than that of the average man. No, I think not. Anyhow, blasphemous or not, that is my need, and I must follow after my own thinking and my own desire."

"If that desire were satisfied," asks Alianora, rather queerly, "would you be content to settle down to some such rational method of living as becomes a reputable sorcerer and king?"

"I think so, for a king has no master, and he is at liberty to travel everywhither, and to see the ends of this world and judge them. Yes, I think so, in a world wherein nothing is certain."

"If I but half way believed that, I would endeavor to obtain Schamir."

"And what in the devil is this Schamir?"

"A slip of the tongue," replied Alianora, smiling. "No, I shall have nothing to do with your idiotic mud figures, and I shall tell you nothing further."

"Come now, pettikins!" says Manuel. And he began coaxing the Princess of Provence with just such cajoleries as the big handsome boy had formerly exercised against the peasant girls of Rathgor.

"Schamir," said Alianora, at last, "is set in a signet ring which is very well known in the country on the other side of the fire. Schamir has the appearance of a black pebble; and if, after performing the proper ceremonies, you were to touch one of these figures with it the figure would become animated."

"Well, but," says Manuel, "the difficulty is that if I attempt to pa.s.s through the fire in order to reach the country behind it, I shall be burned to a cinder, and so I have no way of obtaining this talisman."

"In order to obtain it," Alianora told him, "one must hard-boil an egg from the falcon's nest, then replace it in the nest, and secrete oneself near by with a crossbow, under a red and white umbrella, until the mother bird, finding one of her eggs resists all her endeavors to infuse warmth into it, flies off, and plunges into the nearest fire, and returns with this ring in her beak. With Schamir she will touch the boiled egg, and so restore the egg to its former condition. At that moment she must be shot, and the ring must be secured, before the falcon can return the talisman to its owner. I mean, to its dreadful owner, who is"--here Alianora made an incomprehensible sign,--"who is Queen Freydis of Audela."

"Come," said Manuel, "what is the good of my knowing this in the dead of winter! It will be months before the falcons are nesting again."

"Manuel, Manuel, there is no understanding you! Do you not see how badly it looks for a grown man, and far more for a famed champion and a potent sorcerer, to be pouting and scowling and kicking your heels about like that, and having no patience at all?"

"Yes, I suppose it does look badly, but I am Manuel, and I follow--"

"Oh, spare me that," cried Alianora, "or else, no matter how much I may love you, dearest, I shall box your jaws!"

"None the less, what I was going to say is true," declared Manuel, "and if only you would believe it, matters would go more smoothly between us."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XI

Magic of the Apsarasas

Now the tale tells how, to humor Alianora, Count Manuel applied himself to the magic of the Apsarasas. He went with the Princess to a high secret place, and Alianora, crying sweetly, in the famous old fashion, "Torolix, Ciccabau, Tio, Tio, Torolililix!" performed the proper incantations, and forthwith birds came mult.i.tudinously from all quarters of the sky, in a descending flood of color and flapping and whistling and screeching.

The peac.o.c.k screamed, "With what measure thou judgest others, thou shalt thyself be judged."

Sang the nightingale, "Contentment is the greatest happiness."

The turtle-dove called, "It were better for some created things that they had never been created."

The peewit chirped, "He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none for himself."

The stork said huskily, "The fashion of this world pa.s.seth away."

And the wail of the eagle was, "Howsoever long life may be, yet its inevitable term is death."

"Now that is virtually what I said," declared the stork, "and you are a bold-faced and bald-headed plagiarist."

"And you," replied the eagle, clutching the stork's throat, "are a dead bird that will deliver no more babies."

But Dom Manuel tugged at the eagle's wing, and asked him if he really meant that to hold good before this Court of the Birds. And when the infuriated eagle opened his cruel beak, and held up one murderous claw, to make solemn oath that indeed he did mean it, and would show them too, the stork very intelligently flew away.

"I shall not ever forget your kindness, Count Manuel," cried the stork, "and do you remember that the customary three wishes are always yours for the asking."

"And I too am grateful," said the abashed eagle,--"yes, upon the whole, I am grateful, for if I had killed that long-legged pest it would have been in contempt of the court, and they would have set me to hatching red c.o.c.katrices. Still, his reproach was not unfounded, and I must think up a new cry."

So the eagle perched on a rock, and said tentatively, "There is such a thing as being too proud to fight." He shook his bald head disgustedly, and tried, "The only enduring peace is a peace without victory," but that did not seem to content him either. Afterward he cried out, "All persons who oppose me have pygmy minds," and "If everybody does not do exactly as I order, the heart of the world will be broken": and many other foolish things he repeated, and shook his head over, for none of these axioms pleased the eagle, and he no longer admired the pedagogue who had invented them.

So in his worried quest for a saying sufficiently orotund and meaningless to content his ethics, and to be hailed with convenience as a great moral principle, the eagle forgot all about Count Manuel: but the stork did not forget, because in the eyes of the stork the life of the stork is valuable.

The other birds uttered various such sentiments as have been recorded, and all these, they told Manuel, were accredited sorceries. The big yellow-haired boy did not dispute it, he rarely disputed anything: but the droop to that curious left eye of his was accentuated, and he admitted to Alianora that he wondered if such faint-hearted smug little truths were indeed the height of wisdom, outside of religion and public speaking. Then he asked which was the wisest of the birds, and they told him the Zhar-Pt.i.tza, whom others called the Fire-Bird.

Manuel induced Alianora to summon the Zhar-Pt.i.tza, who is the oldest and the most learned of all living creatures, although he has thus far learned nothing a.s.suredly except that appearances have to be kept up.

The Zhar-Pt.i.tza came, crying wearily, "Fine feathers make fine birds."

You heard him from afar.

The Zhar-Pt.i.tza himself had every reason to get comfort out of this axiom, for his plumage was everywhere the most brilliant purple, except that his neck feathers were the color of new gold, and his tail was blue with somewhat longer red feathers intermingled. His throat was wattled gorgeously, and his head was tufted, and he seemed a trifle larger than the eagle. The Fire-Bird brought with him his nest of ca.s.sia and sprigs of incense, and this he put down upon the lichened rocks, and he sat in it while he talked with Manuel.

The frivolous question that Manuel raised as to his clay figures, the Zhar-Pt.i.tza considered a very human bit of nonsense: and the wise creature said he felt forced to point out that no intelligent bird would ever dream of making images.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE WAS DRYING OUT IN THE SUN]

"But, sir," said Manuel, "I do not wish to burden this world with any more lifeless images. Instead, I wish to make in this world an animated figure, very much as, they say, a G.o.d did once upon a time--"

"Come, you should not try to put too much responsibility upon Jahveh,"

protested the Zhar-Pt.i.tza, tolerantly, "for Jahveh made only one man, and did not ever do it again. I remember the making of that first man very clearly, for I was created the morning before, with instructions to fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, so I saw the whole affair. Yes, Jahveh did create the first man on the sixth day. And I voiced no criticism. For of course after working continuously for nearly a whole week, and making so many really important things, no creative artist should be blamed for not being in his happiest vein on the sixth day."

"And did you happen to notice, sir," asks Manuel, hopefully, "by what method animation was given to Adam?"

"No, he was drying out in the sun when I first saw him, with Gabriel sitting at his feet, playing on a flageolet: and naturally I did not pay any particular attention to such foolishness."

"Well, well, I do not a.s.sert that the making of men is the highest form of art, yet, none the less, a geas is upon me to make myself a very splendid and admirable young man."