There was silence in the Room of Ageus. The queer small boy sat leaning back in the chair which little Melicent had just left. He sat with his legs crossed, and with his gloved hands clasping his right knee, as he looked appraisingly3 at Melicent. He displayed a beautiful sad face, with curled yellow hair hanging about his shoulders, and he was dressed in a vermilion silk coat: at his left side, worn like a sword, was a vast pair of shears4. He wore also a pointed5 hat of four interblended colors, and his leather gloves were figured with pearls.
"She will be a woman by and by," the strange boy said, with a soft and delicate voice, "and then she too will be coming to us, and we will provide fine sorrows for her."
"No, Hinzelmann," Count Manuel replied, as he stroked the round straw-colored head of little Melicent. "This is the child of Niafer. She comes of a race that has no time to be peering out of dubious6 windows."
"It is your child too, Count Manuel. Therefore she too, between now and her burial, will be wanting to be made free of my sister Suskind's kingdom, as you have been made free of it, at a price. Oh, very certainly you have paid little as yet save the one lock of your gray hair, but in time you will pay the other price which Suskind demands. I know, for it is I who collect my sister Suskind's revenues, and when the proper hour arrives, believe me, Count Manuel, I shall not be asking your leave, nor is there any price which you, I think, will not be paying willingly."
"That is probable. For Suskind is wise and strange, and the grave beauty of her youth is the fulfilment of an old hope. Life had become a tedious matter of much money and much bloodshed, but she has restored to me the gold and crimson7 of dawn."
"So, do you very greatly love my sister Suskind?" says Hinzelmann, smiling rather sadly.
"She is my heart's delight, and the desire of my desire. It was she for whom, unwittingly, I had been longing8 always, since I first went away from Suskind, to climb upon the gray heights of Vraidex in my long pursuit of much wealth and fame. I had seen my wishes fulfilled, and my dreams accomplished9; all the godlike discontents which ennobled my youth had died painlessly in cushioned places. And living had come to be a habit of doing what little persons expected, and youth was gone out of me, and I, that used to follow with a high head after my own thinking and my own desires, could not any longer very greatly care for anything. Now I am changed: for Suskind has made me free once more of the Country of the Young and of the ageless self-tormenting youth of the gray depths which maddened Ruric, but did not madden me."
"Look you, Count Manuel, but that penniless young nobody, Ruric the clerk, was not trapped as you are trapped. For from the faith of others there is no escape upon this side of the window. World-famous Manuel the Redeemer has in this place his luck and prosperity to maintain until the orderings of unimaginative gods have quite destroyed the Manuel that once followed after his own thinking. For even the high gods here note with approval that you have become the sort of person in whom the gods put confidence, and so they favor you unscrupulously. Here all is pre-arranged for you by the thinking of others. Here there is no escape for you from acquiring a little more wealth to-day, a little more meadowland to-morrow, with daily a little more applause and honor and envy from your fellows, along with always slowly increasing wrinkles and dulling wits and an augmenting11 paunch, and with the smug approval of everybody upon earth and in heaven. That is the reward of those persons whom you humorously call successful persons."
Dom Manuel answered very slowly, and to little Melicent it seemed that Father's voice was sad.
Said Manuel: "Certainly, I think there is no escape for me upon this side of the window of Ageus. A bond was put upon me to make a figure in this world, and I discharged that obligation. Then came another and yet another obligation to be discharged. And now has come upon me a geas which is not to be lifted either by toils12 or by miracles. It is the geas which is laid on every person, and the life of every man is as my life, with no moment free from some bond or another. Heh, youth vaunts windily, but in the end nobody can follow after his own thinking and his own desire. At every turn he is confronted by that which is expected, and obligation follows obligation, and in the long run no champion can be stronger than everybody. So we succumb13 to this world's terrible unreason, willy-nilly, and Helmas has been made wise, and Ferdinand has been made saintly, and I have been made successful, by that which was expected of us, and by that which none of us had ever any real chance to resist in a world wherein all men are nourished by their beliefs."
"And does not success content you?"
"Ah, but," asked Manuel slowly, just as he had once asked Horvendile in Manuel's lost youth, "what is success? They tell me I have succeeded marvelously in all things, rising from low beginnings, to become the most lucky and the least scrupulous10 rogue14 alive: yet, hearing men's applause, I sometimes wonder, for I know that a smaller-hearted creature and a creature poorer in spirit is posturing15 in Count Manuel's high cushioned places than used to go afield with the miller's pigs."
"Why, yes, Count Manuel, you have made endurable terms with this world by succumbing16 to its foolishness: but do you take comfort, for that is the one way open to anybody who has not rightly seen and judged the ends of this world. At worst, you have had all your desires, and you have made a very notable figure in Count Manuel's envied station."
"But I starve there, Hinzelmann, I dry away into stone, and this envied living is reshaping me into a complacent17 idol18 for fools to honor, and the approval of fools is converting the heart and wits of me into the stony19 heart and wits of an idol. And I look back upon my breathless old endeavors, and I wonder drearily20, 'Was it for this?'"
"Yes," Hinzelmann said: and he shrugged21, without ever putting off that sad smile of his. "Yes, yes, all this is only another way of saying that Béda has kept his word. But no man gets rid of Misery22, Count Manuel, except at a price."
They stayed silent for a while. Count Manuel stroked the round straw-colored head of little Melicent. Hinzelmann played with the small cross which hung at Hinzelmann's neck. This cross appeared to be woven of plaited strings23, but when Hinzelmann shook the cross it jingled24 like a bell.
"Yet, none the less," says Hinzelmann, "here you remain. No, certainly, I cannot understand you, Count Manuel. As a drunkard goes back to the destroying cask, so do you continue to return to your fine home at Storisende and to the incessant25 whispering of your father's father, for all that you have but to remain in Suskind's low red-pillared palace to be forever rid of that whisper and of this dreary26 satiating of human desires."
"I shall of course make my permanent quarters there by and by," Count Manuel said, "but not just yet. It would not be quite fair to my wife for me to be leaving Storisende just now, when we are getting in the crops, and when everything is more or less upset already—"
"I perceive you are still inventing excuses, Count Manuel, to put off yielding entire allegiance to my sister."
"No, it is not that, not that at all! It is only the upset condition of things, just now, and, besides, Hinzelmann, the stork27 is to bring us the last girl child the latter part of next week. We are to call her Ettarre, and I would like to have a sight of her, of course—In fact, I am compelled to stay through mere28 civility, inasmuch as the Queen of Philistia is sending the very famous St. Holmendis especially to christen this baby. And it would be, Hinzelmann, the height of rudeness for me to be leaving home, just now, as though I wanted to avoid his visit—"
Hinzelmann still smiled rather sadly. "Last month you could not come to us because your wife was just then outworn with standing29 in the hot kitchen and stewing30 jams and marmalades. Dom Manuel, will you come when the baby is delivered and this Saint has been attended to and all the crops are in?"
"Well, but Hinzelmann, within a week or two we shall be brewing31 this year's ale, and I have always more or less seen to that—"
Still Hinzelmann smiled sadly. He pointed with his small gloved hand toward Melicent. "And what about your other enslavement, to this child here?"
"Why, certainly, Hinzelmann, the brat32 does need a father to look out for her, so long as she is the merest baby. And naturally, I have been thinking about that of late, rather seriously—"
Hinzelmann spoke33 with deliberation. "She is very nearly the most stupid and the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you must remember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well as to Suskind."
But Dom Manuel was not provoked. "As if I did not know the child is in no way remarkable34! No, my good Hinzelmann, you that serve Suskind have shown me strange dear things, but nothing more strange and dear than a thing which I discovered for myself. For I am that Manuel whom men call the Redeemer of Poictesme, and my deeds will be the themes of harpers whose grandparents are not yet born; I have known love and war and all manner of adventure: but all the sighings and hushed laughter of yesterday, and all the trumpet-blowing and shouting, and all that I have witnessed of the unreticent fond human ways of great persons who for the while have put aside their state, and all the good that in my day I may have done, and all the evil that I have certainly destroyed,—all this seems trivial as set against the producing of this tousled brat. No, to be sure, she is backward as compared with Emmerick, or even Dorothy, and she is not, as you say, an at all remarkable child, though very often, I can assure you, she does things that would astonish you. Now, for instance—"
"Spare me!" said Hinzelmann.
"Well, but it really was very clever of her," Dom Manuel stipulated35, with disappointment. "However, I was going to say that I, who have harried36 pagandom, and capped jests with kings, and am now setting terms for the Holy Father, have come to regard the doings of this ill-bred, selfish, ugly, little imp37 as more important than my doings. And I cannot resolve to leave her, just yet. So, Hinzelmann, my friend, I think I will not thoroughly38 commit myself, just yet. But after Christmas we will see about it."
"And I will tell you the two reasons of this shilly-shallying, Count Manuel. One reason is that you are human, and the other reason is that in your head there are gray hairs."
"What, can it be," said the big warrior39, forlornly, "that I who have not yet had twenty-six years of living am past my prime, and that already life is going out of me?"
"You must remember the price you paid to win back Dame40 Niafer from paradise. As truth, and not the almanac, must estimate these things you are now nearer fifty-six."
"Well," Manuel said, stoutly41, "I do not regret it, and for Niafer's sake I am willing to become a hundred and six. But certainly it is hard to think of myself as an old fellow on the brink42 of the scrap-pile."
"Oho, you are not yet so old, Count Manuel, but that Suskind's power is greater than the power of the child: and besides, there is a way to break the power of the child. Death has merely scratched small wrinkles, very lightly, with one talon43, to mark you as his by and by. That is all as yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, who were once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire, for there remains44 in you a leaven45 even to-day. Yes, yes, though you deny her to-day, you will be entreating46 her to-morrow, and then it may be she will punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you are obstinate47, for it is at this time I run about the September world collecting my sister's revenues, and her debtors48 are very numerous."
And with that the boy, still smiling gravely, slipped out of the third window into the gray sweet-smelling dusk, and little Melicent said, "But, Father, why did that queer sad boy want me to be climbing out of the window with him?"
"So that he might be kind to you, my dear, as he estimates kindness."
"But why did the sad boy want a piece of my hair?" asked Melicent; "and why did he cut it off with his big shiny shears, while you were writing, and he was playing with me?"
"It was to pay a price," says Manuel.
He knew now that the Alf charm was laid on his loved child, and that this was the price of his junketings. He knew also that Suskind would never remit49 this price.
Then Melicent demanded, "And what makes your face so white?"
"It must be pale with hunger, child: so I think that you and I had better be getting to our dinner."
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1
perturbed
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| adj.烦燥不安的v.使（某人）烦恼，不安( perturb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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2
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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appraisingly
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| adv.以品评或评价的眼光 | |
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shears
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| n.大剪刀 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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7
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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8
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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augmenting
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| 使扩张 | |
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toils
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| 网 | |
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succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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posturing
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| 做出某种姿势( posture的现在分词 ) | |
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16
succumbing
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的现在分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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17
complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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19
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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21
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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23
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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jingled
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| 喝醉的 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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stork
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| n.鹳 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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30
stewing
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| 炖 | |
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31
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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32
brat
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| n.孩子；顽童 | |
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33
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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34
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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35
stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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36
harried
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| v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰 | |
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37
imp
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| n.顽童 | |
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38
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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39
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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40
dame
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| n.女士 | |
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41
stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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42
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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43
talon
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| n.爪；（如爪般的）手指；爪状物 | |
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44
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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45
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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46
entreating
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的现在分词 ) | |
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47
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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48
debtors
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| n.债务人，借方( debtor的名词复数 ) | |
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49
remit
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| v.汇款，汇寄；豁免（债务），免除（处罚等） | |
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