Thus, even the irregularity in Manuel’s eyes is taken by Vanderhoffen, in his Tudor Tales, to be a myth connecting Manuel with the Vedic Rudra and the Russian Magarko and the Serbian Vii—“and every beneficent storm-god represented with his eye perpetually winking (like sheet lightning), lest his concentrated look (the thunderbolt) should reduce the universe to ashes. … His watery parentage, and the storm-god’s relationship with a swan-maiden of the Apsarasas (typifying the mists and clouds), and with Freydis the fire queen, are equally obvious: whereas Niafer is plainly a variant of Nephthys, Lady of the House, whose personality Dr. Budge sums up as ‘the goddess of the death which is not eternal,’ or Nerthus, the Subterranean Earth, which the warm rainstorm quickens to life and fertility.”
All this seems dull enough to be plausible. Yet no less an authority than Charles Garnier has replied, in rather indignant rebuttal: “Qu’ont étè en réalité Manuel et Siegfried, Achille et Rustem? Par quels exploits ont-ils mérité l’éternelle admiration que leur ont vouée les hommes de leur race? Nul ne répondra jamais à ces questions. … Mais Poictesme croit à la réalité de cette figure que ses romans ont faite si belle, car le pays n’a pas d’autre histoire. Cette figure du Comte Manuel est réelle d’ailleurs, car elle est l’image purifiée de la race qui l’a produite, et, si on peut s’exprimer ainsi, l’incarnation de son génie.”
—Which is quite just, and, when you come to think it over, proves Dom Manuel to be nowadays, for practical purposes, at least as real as Dr. Paul Vanderhoffen.
III
Between the two main epic cycles of Poictesme, as embodied in Les Gestes de Manuel and La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen, more or less comparison is inevitable. And Codman, I believe, has put the gist of the matter succinctly enough.
Says Codman: “The Gestes are mundane stories, the History is a cosmic affair, in that, where Manuel faces the world, Jurgen considers the universe. … Dom Manuel is the Achilles of Poictesme, as Jurgen is its Ulysses.”
And, roughly, the distinction serves. Yet minute consideration discovers, I think, in these two sets of legends a more profound, if subtler, difference, in the handling of the protagonist: with Jurgen all of the physical and mental man is rendered as a matter of course; whereas in dealing with Manuel there is, always, I believe, a certain perceptible and strange, if not inexplicable, aloofness. Manuel did thus and thus, Manuel said so-and-so, these legends recount: yes, but never anywhere have I detected any firm assertion as to Manuel’s thoughts and emotions, nor any peep into the workings of this hero’s mind. He is “done” from the outside, always at arm’s length. It is not merely that Manuel’s nature is tinctured with the cool unhumanness of his father the water-demon: rather, these old poets of Poictesme would seem, whether of intention or no, to have dealt with their national hero as a person, howsoever admirable in many of his exploits, whom they have never been able altogether to love, or entirely to sympathize with, or to view quite without distrust.
There are several ways of accounting for this fact—ranging from the hurtful as well as beneficent aspect of the storm-god, to the natural inability of a poet to understand a man who succeeds in everything: but the fact is, after all, of no present importance save that it may well have prompted Lewistam to scamp his dealings with this always somewhat ambiguous Manuel, and so to omit the hereinafter included legends, as unsuited to the clearer and sunnier atmosphere of the Popular Tales.
For my part, I am quite content, in this Comedy of Appearances, to follow the old romancers’ lead. “Such and such things were said and done by our great Manuel,” they say to us, in effect: “such and such were the appearances, and do you make what you can of them.”
I say that, too, with the addition that in real life, also, such is the fashion in which we are compelled to deal with all happenings and with all our fellows, whether they wear or lack the gaudy name of heroism.
Figures of Earth
A Comedy of Appearances
Part I
The Book of Credit
To
Wilson Follett.
“Then answered the Magician dredefully: Manuel, Manuel, now I shall shewe unto thee many bokes of Nygromancy, and howe thou shalt cum by it lyghtly and knowe the practyse therein. And, moreouer, I shall shewe and informe you so that thou shall have thy Desyre, whereby my thynke it is a great Gyfte for so lytyll a doynge.”
I
How Manuel Left the Mire
They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly in attendance upon the miller’s pigs. They tell also that Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him.
Meanwhile in all the environs of Rathgor, and in the thatched villages of Lower Targamon, he was well liked: and when the young people gathered in the evening to drink brandy and eat nuts and gingerbread, nobody danced more merrily than Squinting Manuel. He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way
