The Cream of the Jest, James Branch Cabell [smart ebook reader .TXT] 📗

men, of malignant frenzied women, of wide-eyed little children, and the staid officials, chatting pleasantly among themselves, who came to fetch that day’s tale of those condemned to the guillotine. But more vividly Kennaston saw Ettarre and how tenderly she smiled, in thin wintry sunlight, as she touched Kennaston upon the breast, so that the dream might end and he might escape the guillotine. XXXIV Of One Enigma That Threatened to Prove Allegorical

Then again Kennaston stood alone before a tall window, made up of many lozenge-shaped panes of clear glass set in lead framework. He had put aside one of the two great curtains⁠—of a very fine stuff like gauze, stitched over with transparent glittering beetle-wings, and embroidered with tiny seed pearls⁠—which hung before this window.

Snow covered the expanse of housetops without, and the sky without was glorious with chill stars. That white city belonged to him, he knew, with a host of other cities. He was the strongest of kings. People dreaded him, he knew; and he wondered why anyone should esteem a frail weakling such as he to be formidable. The hand of this great king⁠—his own hand, that held aside the curtain before him⁠—was shriveled and colorless as lambs’ wools. It was like a horrible birdclaw.

(“But then I have the advantage of remembering the twentieth century,” he thought, fleetingly, “and all my contemporaries are superstitious ignorant folk. It is strange, but in this dream I appear to be an old man. That never happened before.”)

A remote music resounded in his ears, and cloying perfumes were about him.⁠ ⁠…

“I want to be happy. And that is impossible, because there is no happiness anywhere in the world. I, a great king, say this⁠—I, who am known in unmapped lands, and before whom nations tremble. For there are but three desirable things in life⁠—love and power and wisdom: and I, the king, have sounded the depths of these, and in none is happiness.”

Despairing words came to him now, and welled to his lips, in a sort of chaunt:

“I am sad tonight, for I remember that I once loved a woman. She was white as the moon; her hair was a gold cloud; she had untroubled eyes. She was so fair that I longed for her until my heart was as the heart of a God. But she sickened and died: worms had their will of her, not I. So I took other women, and my bed was never lonely. Bright poisonous women were brought to me, from beyond the sunset, from the Fortunate Islands, from Invallis and Planasia even; and these showed me nameless endearments and many curious perverse pleasures. But I was not able to forget that woman who was denied me because death had taken her: and I grew a-weary of love, for I perceived that all which has known life must suffer death.

“There was no people anywhere who could withstand my armies. We traveled far in search of such a people. My armies rode into a country of great heat and endless sands, and contended with the Presbyter’s brown horsemen, who fought with arrows and brightly painted bows; and we slew them. My armies entered into a land where men make their homes in the shells of huge snails, and feed upon white worms which have black heads; and we slew them. My armies passed into a land where a people that have no language dwell in dark caves under the earth, and worship a stone that has sixty colors; and we slew them, teaching ruthlessly that all which has known life must suffer death.

“Many stiff-necked kings, still clad in purple and scarlet and wearing gold crowns⁠—monarchs whose proud faces, for all that these men were my slaves, kept their old fashion and stayed changeless as the faces of statues⁠—such were my lackeys: and I burned walled cities. Empires were my playthings, but I had no son to inherit after me. I had no son⁠—only that dead horrible mangled worm, born dead, that I remember seeing very long ago where the woman I loved lay dead. That would have been my son had the thing lived⁠—a greater and a nobler king than I. But death willed otherwise: the life that moved in me was not to be perpetuated: and so, the heart in my body grew dried and little and shriveled, like a parched pea: for I perceived that all which has known life must suffer death.

“Then I turned from warfare, and sought for wisdom. I learned all that it is permitted any man to know⁠—oh, I learned more than is permissible. Have I not summoned demons from the depths of the sea, and at the Sabbat have I not smitten haggard Gods upon the cheek? Yea, at Phigalia did I not pass beneath the earth and strive with a terrible Black Woman, who had the head of a horse, and wrest from her what I desired to know? Have I not talked with Morskoi, that evil formless ruler of the Sea-Folk, and made a compact with him? And has not even Phobetor, whose real name may not be spoken, revealed to me his secrets, at a paid price of which I do not care to think, now I perceive that all which has known life must suffer death?

“Yea, by the Hoofs of the Goat! it seems to me that I have done these things; yet how may I be sure? For I have learned, too, that all man’s senses lie to him, that nothing we see or hear or touch is truthfully reported, and that the visible world at best stands like an island in an uncharted ocean which is a highway, none the less, for much alien traffic. Yet, it seems to me that I found means whereby the universe I live in was stripped of many veils. It seems to me that I do not regret having done this.⁠ ⁠… But presently I shall be dead, and all my dearly-purchased, wearily-earned wisdom must