'Oh, well, and if they do?' says Manuel, shrugging lordily. 'There is no hurt in talking.'
'Yes, Manuel, but such shiftless wandering, into uncomfortable places that nobody ever heard of, would have that appearance. Now there is nothing I would more thoroughly enjoy then to go traveling about at adventure with you, and to be a countess means nothing whatever to me. I am sure I do not in the least care to live in a palace of my own, and be bothered with fine clothes and the responsibility of looking after my rubies, and with servants and parties every day. But you see, darling, I simply could not bear to have people thinking ill of my dear husband, and so, rather than have that happen, I am willing to put up with these things.'
'Oh, oh!' says Manuel, and he began pulling vexedly at his little gray beard, 'and does one obligation beget another as fast as this! Now whatever would you have me do?'
'Obviously, you must get troops from King Ferdinand, and drive that awful Asmund out of Poictesme.'
'Dear me!' says Manuel, 'but what a simple matter you make of it! Shall I attend to it this afternoon?'
'Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not possibly re-conquer all Poictesme this afternoon—.'
'Oh!' says Manuel.
'No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get troops to help you, both horse and foot.'
'My dearest, I only meant—'
'—Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill off all the Northmen.'
'Niafer, will you let me explain—'
'—Besides, you are miles away from Poictesme. You could not even manage to get there this afternoon.'
Manuel put his hand over her mouth. 'Niafer, when I spoke of subjugating Poictesme this afternoon I was attempting a mild joke. I will never any more attempt light irony in your presence, for I perceive that you do not appreciate my humor. Meanwhile I repeat to you, No, no, a thousand times, no! To be called Count of Poictesme sounds well, it strokes the hearing: but I will not be set to root and vegetate in a few hundred spadefuls of dirt. No, for I have but one lifetime here, and in that lifetime I mean to see this world and all the ends of this world, that I may judge them. And I,' he concluded, decisively, 'am Manuel, who follow after my own thinking and my own desire.'
Niafer began to weep. 'I simply cannot bear to think of what people will say of you.'
'Come, come, my dear,' says Manuel, 'this is preposterous.'
Niafer wept.
'You will only end by making yourself ill!' says Manuel.
Niafer continued to weep.
'My mind is quite made up,' says Manuel, 'so what, in God's name, is the good of this?'
Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big champion sat looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He viciously kicked at the heavy glistening green head of the dragon, still bleeding uglily there at his feet, but that did no good whatever. The dragon-queller was beaten. He could do nothing against such moisture, his resolution was dampened and his independence was washed away by this salt flood. And they say too that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he acknowledged.
'Very well, then,' Manuel says, by and by, 'let us cross the Loir, and ride south to look for our infernal coronet with the rubies in it, and for your servants, and for some of your palaces.'
So in the Christmas holidays they bring a tall burly squinting gray-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the royal palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo and his goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The King was delighted by the change in Manuel's looks, and said that experience and maturity were fine things to be suggested by the appearance of a nobleman in Manuel's position. But, a pest! as for giving him any troops with which to conquer Poictesme, that was quite another matter. The King needed his own soldiers for his own ends, which necessitated the immediate capture of Cordova. Meanwhile here were the Prince de Gatinais and the Marquess di Paz, who also had come with this insane request, the one for soldiers to help him against the Philistines, and the other against the Catalans.
'Everybody to whom I ever granted a fief seems to need troops nowadays,' the King grumbled, 'and if any one of you had any judgment whatever you would have retained your lands once they were given you.'
'Our deficiencies, sire,' says the young Prince de Gatinais, with considerable spirit, 'have not been altogether in judgment, but rather in the support afforded us by our liege-lord.'
This was perfectly true; but inasmuch as such blunt truths are not usually flung at a king and a saint, now Ferdinand's thin brows went up.
'Do you think so?' said the King. 'We must see about it. What is that, for example?'
He pointed to the pool by which the lemon-trees were watered, and the Prince glanced at the yellow object afloat in this pool. 'Sire,' said de Gatinais, 'it is a lemon which has fallen from one of the trees.'
'So you judge it to be a lemon. And what do you make of it, di Paz?' the King inquired.
The Marquess was a statesman who took few chances. He walked to the edge of the pool, and looked at the thing before committing himself: and he came back smiling. 'Ah, sire, you have indeed contrived a cunning sermon against hasty judgment, for, while the tree is a lemon-tree, the thing that floats beneath it is an orange.'
'So you, Marquess, judge it to be an orange. And what do you make of it, Count of Poictesme?' the King asks now.
If di Paz took few chances, Manuel took none at all. He waded into the pool, and fetched out the thing which floated there. 'King,' says big Dom Manuel, sagely blinking his bright pale eyes, 'it is the half of an orange.'
Said the King: 'Here is a man who is not lightly deceived by the vain shows of this world, and who values truth more than dry shoes. Count Manuel, you shall have your troops, and you others must wait until you have acquired Count Manuel's powers of judgment, which, let me tell you, are more valuable than any fief I have to give.'
So when the spring had opened, Manuel went into Poictesme at the head of a very creditable army, and Dom Manuel summoned Duke Asmund to surrender all that country. Asmund, who was habitually peevish under the puckerel curse, refused with opprobrious epithets, and the fighting began.
Manuel had, of course, no knowledge of generalship, but King Ferdinand sent the Conde de Tohil Vaca as Manuel's lieutenant. Manuel now figured imposingly in jeweled armor, and the sight of his shield bearing the rampant stallion and the motto
To the contrary, Dom Manuel now developed an invaluable gift for public speaking, and in every place which he conquered and occupied he made powerful addresses to the surviving inhabitants before he had them hanged, exhorting all right-thinking persons to crush the military autocracy of Asmund. Besides, as Manuel pointed out, this was a struggle such as the world had never known, in that it was a war to end war forever, and to ensure eternal peace for everybody's children. Never, as he put it forcefully, had men fought for a more glorious cause. And so on and go on, said he, and these uplifting thoughts had a fine effect upon everyone.
'How wonderfully you speak!' Dame Niafer would say admiringly.
And Manuel would look at her queerly, and reply: 'I am earning your home, my dear, and your servants' wages, and some day these verbal jewels will be perpetuated in a real coronet. For I perceive that a former acquaintance of mine was right in pointing out the difference between men and the other animals.'
'Ah, yes, indeed!' said Niafer, very gravely, and not attaching any particular meaning to it, but generally gathering that she and Manuel were talking about something edifying and pious. For Niafer was now a devout Christian, as became a Countess of Poictesme, and nobody anywhere entertained a more sincere reverence for solemn noises.
'For instance,' Dame Niafer continued, 'they tell me that these lovely speeches of yours have produced such an effect upon the Philistines yonder that their Queen Stultitia has proffered an alliance, and has promised to send you light cavalry and battering-rams.'
'It is true she has promised to send them, but she has not done so.'
