Miramon sighed. He said:
'This is the cry of all husbands that now are or may be hereafter,—'What has become of the girl that I married? and how should I rightly deal with this woman whom somehow time has involved in my doings? Love, of a sort, now I have for her, but not the love that was yesterday's—''
While Miramon spoke thus, the two lads were looking at each other blankly: for they were young, and their understanding of this matter was as yet withheld.
Then said Miramon:
'Yes, he is wiser that shelters his longing from any such surfeit. Yes, he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the substance, wisely regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow which, if you grasp at it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will follow, gilding all life with its glory, and keeping always one woman young and most fair and most wise, and unwon; and keeping you always never contented, but armed with a self-respect that no husband manages quite to retain in the face of being contented. No, for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance, fused for that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest pleasure from either alone, but hardly from these two united.'
'Well,' Manuel conceded, 'all this may be true; but I never quite understood hexameters, and so I could not ever see the good of talking in them.'
'I always do that, Manuel, when I am deeply affected. It is, I suppose, the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment that inhibitions are removed, for when I think about the impending severance from my dear wife I more or less lose control of myself—You see, she takes an active interest in my work, and that does not do with a creative artist in any line. Oh, dear me, no, not for a moment!' says Miramon, forlornly.
'But how can that be?' Niafer asked him.
'As all persons know, I design the dreams of men. Now Gisele asserts that people have enough trouble in real life, without having to go to sleep to look for it—'
'Certainly that is true,' says Niafer.
'So she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and edifying dreams and glad dreams. She says you must give tired persons what they most need; and is emphatic about the importance of everybody's sleeping in a wholesome atmosphere. So I have not been permitted to design a fine nightmare or a creditable terror—nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no sea-serpents or krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a really free hand,— for months and months: and my art suffers. Then, as for other dreams, of a more roguish nature—'
'What sort of dreams can you be talking about, I wonder, Miramon?'
The magician described what he meant. 'Such dreams also she has quite forbidden,' he added, with a sigh.
'I see,' said Manuel: 'and now I think of it, it is true that I have not had a dream of that sort for quite a while.'
'No man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. And here again my art suffers, for my designs in this line were always especially vivid and effective, and pleased the most rigid. Then, too, Gisele is always doing and telling me things for my own good—In fine, my lads, my wife takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my clutches,' said Miramon, fretfully.
'It is difficult to explain to you, Manuel, just now, but after you have been married to Gisele for a while you will comprehend without any explaining.'
'Now, Miramon, I marvel to see a great magician controlled by a woman who is in his power, and who can, after all, do nothing but talk.'
Miramon for some while considered Manuel, rather helplessly. 'Unmarried men do wonder about that,' said Miramon. 'At all events, I will summon her, and you can explain how you have conquered me, and then you can take her away and marry her yourself, and Heaven help you!'
'But shall I explain that it was you who gave me the resistless sword?'
'No, Manuel: no, you should be candid within more rational limits. For you are now a famous champion, that has crowned with victory a righteous cause for which many stalwart knights and gallant gentlemen have made the supreme sacrifice, because they knew that in the end the right must conquer. Your success thus represents the working out of a great moral principle, and to explain the practical minutiae of these august processes is not always quite respectable. Besides, if Gisele thought I wished to get rid of her she would most certainly resort to comments of which I prefer not to think.'
But now into the room came the magician's wife, Gisele.
'She is, certainly, rather pretty,' said Niafer, to Manuel.
Said Manuel, rapturously: 'She is the finest and loveliest creature that I have ever seen. Beholding her unequalled beauty, I know that here are all the dreams of yesterday fulfilled. I recollect, too, my songs of yesterday, which I was used to sing to my pigs, about my love for a far princess who was 'white as a lily, more red than roses, and resplendent as rubies of the Orient,' for here I find my old songs to be applicable, if rather inadequate. And by this shabby villain's failure to appreciate the unequalled beauty of his victim I am amazed.'
'As to that, I have my suspicions,' Niafer replied. 'And now she is about to speak I believe she will justify these suspicions, for Madame Gisele is in no placid frame of mind.'
'What is this nonsense,' says the proud shining lady, to Miramon Lluagor, 'that I hear about your having been conquered?'
'Alas, my love, it is perfectly true. This champion has, in some inexplicable way, come by the magic weapon Flamberge which is the one weapon wherewith I can be conquered. So I have yielded to him, and he is about, I think, to sever my head from my body.'
The beautiful girl was indignant, because she had recognized that, magician or no, there is small difference in husbands after the first month or two; and with Miramon tolerably well trained, she had no intention of changing him for another husband. Therefore Gisele inquired, 'And what about me?' in a tone that foreboded turmoil.
The magician rubbed his hands, uncomfortably. 'My dear, I am of course quite powerless before Flamberge. Inasmuch as your rescue appears to have been effected in accordance with every rule in these matters, and the victorious champion is resolute to requite my evil-doing and to restore you to your grieving parents, I am afraid there is nothing I can well do about it.'
'Do you look me in the eye, Miramon Lluagor!' says the Lady Gisele. The dreadful prince of the seven madnesses obeyed her, with a placating smile. 'Yes, you have been up to something,' she said, 'And Heaven only knows what, though of course it does not really matter.'
Madame Gisele then looked at Manuel 'So you are the champion that has come to rescue me!' she said, unhastily, as her big sapphire eyes appraised him over her great fan of gaily colored feathers, and as Manuel somehow began to fidget.
Gisele looked last of all at Niafer. 'I must say you have been long enough in coming,' observed Gisele.
'It took me two days, madame, to find and catch a turtle,' Niafer replied, 'and that delayed me.'
'Oh, you have always some tale or other, trust you for that, but it is better late than never. Come, Niafer, and do you know anything about this gawky, ragtag, yellow-haired young champion?'
'Yes, madame, he formerly lived in attendance upon the miller's pigs, down Rathgor way, and I have seen him hanging about the kitchen at Arnaye.'
Gisele turned now toward the magician, with her thin gold chains and the innumerable brilliancies of her jewels flashing no more brightly than flashed the sapphire of her eyes. 'There!' she said, terribly: 'and you were going to surrender me to a swineherd, with half the hair chopped from his head, and with the shirt sticking out of both his ragged elbows!'
'My dearest, irrespective of tonsorial tastes, and disregarding all sartorial niceties, and swineherd or not, he holds the magic sword Flamberge, before which all my powers are nothing.'
'But that is easily settled. Have men no sense whatever! Boy, do you give me that sword, before you hurt yourself fiddling with it, and let us have an end of this nonsense.'
Thus the proud lady spoke, and for a while the victorious champion regarded her with very youthful looking, hurt eyes. But he was not routed.
'Madame Gisele,' replied Manuel, 'gawky and poorly clad and young as I may be, so long as I retain this sword I am master of you all and of the future too. Yielding it, I yield everything my elders have taught me to prize, for my grave elders have taught me that much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife are finer things to ward
