Stories From The Old Attic, Robert Harris [top ten books of all time .txt] 📗

Well, enough mush. The point is that an unspoken understanding had developed between them so that only a few months after the rest of the kingdom knew it, they realized that they would one day wed and together laugh and cry through the years until death should wake them.

But to return to the weightier problem of King Cleon. Upon being asked for his advice, Sir Philo recommended that the king choose from among the following options. One, his majesty could choose the wisest and most just suitor for Jennifrella, for such a man would not only make a good king, but he would most likely be a decent husband, too. Or secondly, the king might seek a foreign alliance and marry his daughter to another king’s son. This was an alternative which Sir Philo did not recommend, but mentioned only for the sake of completeness. And finally, the last possibility would be to let Jennifrella choose for herself—in which case, everyone knew that Sir Fassade would be the next king, and he, opined Sir Philo, would be “acceptable,” producing a government no worse than the current one. (Since I have already described the king’s advisor as “thoughtful,” I shall now add “tactful” and note that the final participial phrase of the previous sentence was thought but not uttered by the knight.) As for the kind of husband Sir Fassade would make, the princess would have no one to blame but herself.

King Cleon thought the matter over not quite long enough and decided to hold an archery contest, the winner of which would marry his daughter. The degree of Sir Philo’s consternation is not recorded in the annals from which I am plagiarizing, but one may suppose that it was substantial, for reasons which will hereinafter appear. Needless to say (except to make the story longer and extend the reader’s pleasure), Sir Philo made energetic protests, which eventually descended to rather pathetic entreaties, all in a futile attempt to change the king’s mind. But King Cleon would not be dissuaded, and so the news was soon heralded throughout the kingdom, and, as you might suppose, arrow sales shot up immediately and remarkably.

As when a child pounds the ground near an anthill, causing a good many of the residents instantly to surface and run around in massed panic, so on the day of the contest the world arrived in a swarm at the castle of Cleon the Modest and prepared to be a witness, if not the victor, in the winning of Jennifrella.

There were several dozen contenders in the contest, some quite accomplished archers, some more or less dilettantish, and quite a few whose skills put the spectators at random hazard. Amid the noise and enthusiasm on this day stood a grim and silent Sir Philo, deeply troubled about the proceedings for three reasons. First, strictly from a philosophical standpoint, a shooting contest was a completely irrational method of choosing either a spouse or a future king, and irrationality like this always troubled the young knight. Second, though Sir Fassade was a very good shot, capable of satisfactorily humiliating most of the other contestants, he was no match for Sir Bargle. If they used the word then, I would have to exaggerate only slightly to say that Sir Bargle was, as they say in French, or maybe don’t, a jerque. He punctuated nearly every sentence with an oath or a belch, constantly leered at the ladies in waiting (who knew all too well to keep a safe distance from him), and those who attended carefully to his speech noted that the word he used more than any other was “me.” In a word (or fourteen, actually), Sir Bargle was a man unlikely to put his personal appetites in second place. The prospect of this knight nuzzling the hair or nibbling the earlobes of Jennifrella was in itself sufficiently revulsive to Sir Philo; the prospect of his becoming king was absolutely unthinkable.

The third reason that the king’s advisor was grieved about the “score ahead and wed” method of selecting the princess’ groom was that the only person in all the realm who could outshoot Sir Bargle was—Sir Philo.

Prithee, talk not to me about psychic conflict—nay, psychic trauma, for I have seen it here, and it is not gentle. Sir Philo traced and retraced many steps around the castle grounds, without thought of direction or destination, the movement of his feet and the tension on his face reflecting the turmoil in his soul. At length, in his anxiety, the brave knight turned to his lady love for succor and advice, and she, with a swiftness that surprised him and a nobility that made him love her more deeply than ever, told him that of course he must put the interest of the kingdom above his personal happiness. She then flew into his arms and burst into inconsolable sobbing for longer than we have time to look in on.

The contest began and proceeded remarkably well, with only the loss of a too-curious cow and a few luckless birds at the hands of the less accomplished suitors. Sir Fassade shot well that day, achieving a personal best. As each arrow hit, closer and closer toward the middle of the target, it made the princess clap a little louder and leap with joy a little higher. A smirk of self-congratulation soon decorated Sir Fassade’s handsome face.

A loud belch and a louder laugh announced the commencement of Sir Bargle’s shooting. As predicted by Sir Philo, Sir Bargle was an excellent shot. As each arrow landed a good handbreadth closer to the center of the target than any of those of Sir Fassade, the smiles on the faces of the princess and her favorite knight grew less and less until they had been completely replaced by somber looks on the knight and what might be described as silent hysteria on the face of the princess. The look on Sir Bargle’s face at the conclusion of his shooting is a little too carnal for me to describe.

As he shot his set of arrows, Sir Philo was forced more than once, after he had fully drawn his bow, to pause, and to wait until a little tremble—attributed by the crowd to nervousness and eagerness to win Jennifrella—left his hands. As each arrow hit the target, remarkably near the middle, it also pierced the very center of Lucinda’s heart. The young knight thought more than once about letting an arrow fly wide of the target, but he did his duty, though it brought grief to himself and devastation to the woman he treasured.

Sir Philo’s smile as he took the hand of the princess was obviously forced, but no one noticed because Jennifrella was now bawling so spectacularly that the crowd, though not at all wishing to be unkind, found it, frankly, entertaining.

As it does for us all, time passed and life went on.

After a peculiar three years’ delay, Lucinda finally made her choice from among several good offers and moved with her new husband to a remote part of the kingdom where it was reported that she was content, though some said that the cooler climate had somewhat subdued her well-known effervescence.

In the fullness of time, Sir Philo exchanged his sword for a crown and ascended the throne. He ruled wisely and justly, and the kingdom prospered. Hero that he was, he had mostly adjusted to the princess’ personality, reminding himself as occasion required (and occasion did require), that not only had he acted for the good of the kingdom, but he had wed great beauty and, eventually, personal power. He further reminded himself that Jennifrella had made an adequate wife, even after her face wrinkled and her tummy pudged, and that she had proved to be a reasonable mother to his children. Whenever, in a moment of inattention, he discovered himself pining to enjoy a witty remark or some unguarded laughter, he quoted, hoping that it was true, the old proverb that “we grow most not when something is given but when something is taken away.”

All in all, it was a reasonable life with much to be thankful for. Jennifrella’s joy was that Sir Philo, now King Philo, remained a generous and loving husband even as her beauty faded; her only regret was that Sir Fassade had married her younger and more amiable sister, and both of them appeared to be altogether too happy. Lucinda’s joy was in her two lovely children, whom she took, once or twice, to see the new king as he made a royal progress through their village. Her only regret was that she could reveal only half her heart as she told them what a good man he was. Sir Philo’s joy was that he had acted virtuously and now enjoyed a mostly pleasant life, dispensing justice and mercy with care and humanity. His only regret was that he had learned to shoot arrows.

Serendipity

A young man, in the confusion and embarrassment of youth, was walking across the campus of a great university on the way to his philosophy class. At the previous meeting, the professor had posed the question, “If we do not know the purpose of something, how can we know whether any aspect of it is good or bad?” This question, together with the problem for the day, “Does man have a purpose?” had taken complete occupation of the young man’s mind, not because of any intrinsic interest, but because the professor was in the habit of calling on students and expecting a thoughtful response. So deeply meditative was the young man that he neglected to observe his path adequately, with the result that he soon bounced his head off an unhappily placed tree in the middle of the lawn.

Picking himself up and dusting himself off, the young man looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his inadvertent folly. The only people nearby were two men, who, although they were just a dozen feet away, were completely oblivious to the young man’s accident, for the reason that they were engaged in a somewhat heated argument. Whether to obtain some sympathy for his bruised head, or to excuse his inattention, or perhaps simply because they were standing near a wheel barrow and looked for all the world like gardeners, the young man interrupted them with the slightly exasperated question, “Excuse me, but what is that tree doing there, anyway?”

Now it so happens that these two men were not gardeners at all. They were, in fact, tenured professors of philosophy, the very subject the young man was struggling to understand. They turned to him at once and condescended to admit him to their conversation.

“Well,” said the first philosopher, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “see here. This is a tree.” And pointing to the tree the young man was already too-intimately familiar with, concluded with apparent satisfaction, “As Circumplexius has said in the fourth book of his De Scientia, ‘An example is the best definition.’”

“I know that is a tree,” replied the youth, rubbing his forehead. “What I want to know is, Why is it there in the first place?”

“You see,” said the other philosopher to the first, “the dance of the blind with the senile.” Then, momentarily stroking his beard, he turned to the young man and continued, “A tree means what it is. The concept of treedom does not subsist in some fortuitous, exogenous hyle—that is the doctrine of carpenters, not of philosophers. As Herman of Rimboa has aptly remarked, ‘Inner eyes must perceive beyond what the outer eyes see.’”

“And as the Chinese say, ‘The flies buzz in the wind, but men drink their tea,’” added the one with glasses. “Here, son,” he went on, pointing again, “this is also a tree. Compare them and deduce treehood by