Math turned the feather in her hand. “Now to be sure! and did you ever see the like of it! Still, a broken feather is no good to anybody, and, as I have told you any number of times, I cannot have trash littering up my kitchen.”
So Math dropped this shining white feather into the fire, on which she was warming over a pot of soup for Manuel’s dinner, and they watched this feather burn.
Manuel says, sighing, “Even so my days consume, and my youth goes out of me, in a land wherein Suskind whispers of uncomfortable things, and wherein there are no maids so clever and dear as Niafer, nor so lovely as Alianora.”
Math said: “I never held with speaking ill of the dead. So may luck and fair words go with your Niafer in her pagan paradise. Of your Suskind too”—Math crossed herself—“the less said, the better. But as for your Alianora, no really nice girl would be flying in the face of heaven and showing her ankles to five nations, and bathing, on a Monday too, in places where almost anybody might come along. It is not proper, but I wonder at her parents.”
“But, Sister, she is a princess!”
“Just so: therefore I burned the feather, because it is not wholesome for persons of our station in life to be robbing princesses of anything, though it be only of a feather.”
“Sister, that is the truth! It is not right to rob anybody of anything, and this would appear to make another bond upon me and another obligation to be discharged, because in taking that feather I have taken what did not belong to me.”
“Boy, do not think you are fooling me, for when your face gets that look on it, I know you are considering some nonsense over and above the nonsense you are talking. However, from your description of the affair, I do not doubt that gallivanting, stark-naked princess thought you were for taking what did not belong to you. Therefore I burned the feather, lest it be recognized and bring you to the gallows or to a worse place. So why did you not scrape your feet before coming into my clean kitchen? and how many times do you expect me to speak to you about that?”
Manuel said nothing. But he seemed to meditate over something that puzzled him. In the upshot he went into the miller’s chicken yard, and caught a goose, and plucked from its wing a feather.
Then Manuel put on his Sunday clothes.
“Far too good for you to be traveling in,” said Math.
Manuel looked down at his half-sister, and once or twice he blinked those shining strange eyes of his. “Sister, if I had been properly dressed when I was master of the doubtful palace, the Lady Gisèle would have taken me quite seriously. I have been thinking about her observations as to my elbows.”
“The coat does not make the man,” replied Math piously.
“It is your belief in any such saying that has made a miller’s wife of you, and will keep you a miller’s wife until the end of time. Now I learned better from my misadventures upon Vraidex, and from my talking with that insane Horvendile about the things which have been and some things which are to be.”
Math, who was a wise woman, said queerly, “I perceive that you are letting your hair grow.”
Manuel said, “Yes.”
“Boy, fast and loose is a mischancy game to play.”
“And being born, also, is a most hazardous speculation, Sister, yet we perforce risk all upon that cast.”
“Now you talk stuff and nonsense—”
“Yes, Sister; but I begin to suspect that the right sort of stuff and nonsense is not unremunerative. I may be wrong, but I shall afford my notion a testing.”
“And after what shiftless idiocy will you be chasing now, to neglect your work?”
“Why, as always, Sister, I must follow my own thinking and my own desire,” says Manuel, lordlily, “and both of these are for a flight above pigs.”
Thereafter Manuel kissed Math, and, again without taking leave of Suskind in the twilight, or of anyone else, he set forth for the far land of Provence.
VII
The Crown of Wisdom
So did it come about that as King Helmas rode a-hunting in Nevet under the Hunter’s Moon he came upon a gigantic and florid young fellow, who was very decently clad in black, and had a queer droop to his left eye, and who appeared to be wandering at adventure in the autumn woods: and the King remembered what had been foretold.
Says King Helmas to Manuel the swineherd, “What is that I see in your pocket wrapped in red silk?”
“It is a feather, King, wrapped in a bit of my sister’s best petticoat.”
“Now, glory be to your dark magics, friend, and at what price will you sell me that feather?”
“But a feather is no use to anybody, King, for, as you see, it is a quite ordinary feather?”
“Come, come!” the King says, shrewdly, “do people anywhere wrap ordinary feathers in red silk? Friend, do not think to deceive King Helmas of Albania, or it will be worse for you. I perfectly recognize that shining white feather as the feather which was moulted in this forest by the Zhar-Ptitza Bird, in the old time before my grandfathers came into this country. For it was foretold that such a young sorcerer as you would bring to me, who have long been the silliest King that ever reigned over the Peohtes, this feather which confers upon its owner perfect wisdom: and for you to dispute the prophecy would be blasphemous.”
“I do not dispute your silliness, King Helmas, nor do I dispute anybody’s prophecies in a world wherein nothing is certain.”
“One thing at least is certain,” remarked King Helmas, frowning uglily, “and it is that among the Peohtes all persons who dispute our prophecies are burned at the stake.”
Manuel shivered
