Chapter X: Book EIGHT: The Candid Footprint

“_They have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed._”
—PSALMS, lxxxix, 51.

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_50._
_Indiscretion of a Bailiff_

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NOW the tale tells that upon the day of the birth of the first son begotten by Count Emmerick, in lawful marriage and with the aid of his own wife Radegonde, there was such a drinking of healths and toasts as never before was known at Storisende. The tale speaks of a most notable banquet, at which twelve dishes were served to every two persons, with a great plenty of the best wine and beer. In the minstrels’ gallery were fiddlers, trumpeters and drummers, those who tossed tambourines, and those who played upon the flute. Ten poets discoursed meanwhile of the feats of Dom Manuel, and presented in even livelier colors the impendent achievements of the Redeemer’s second coming into Poictesme with a ferocious heavenly cortège. And meanwhile also the company drank, and the intoxication of verse was abetted with red wine and white.

Since the poems were rather long, all this resulted in an entertainment from which the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra went homeward hiccoughing and even more than usually benevolent, and without any consciousness of that misstep which had imperiled his continued stay on earth.

For Ninzian of Yair and Upper Ardra had not wholly broken with the heroic cenatory ways of the years wherein Dom Manuel ruled over Poictesme. This seemed the more regrettable because Ninzian, always a pious and philanthropic person, had otherwise become with age appropriately staid. He in theory approved of every one of the reforms enacted everywhere by the Countess Niafer, and confirmed by the Countess Radegonde; and, in practice, Ninzian was of course a staunch supporter of his revered and intimate associate, St. Holmendis, in all the salutary crusades against elves and satyrs and trolls and other uncanonical survivals from unorthodox mythologies, and against the free-thinking of persons who questioned the legend of Manuel, and in the holy man’s hunting down of such demons and stringing up of such heretics, and in all other devout labors. But there, nevertheless, was no disputing that the benevolent and florid bailiff of Upper Ardra had kept a taint of the robustious social customs of Dom Manuel’s worldly heyday.

It followed that Ninzian evaded none of the toasts at Count Emmerick’s banquet and left no friend unpledged. Instead, sleek Ninzian drank the wines of Orléans, of Anjou and of Burgundy; of Auxerre and Beaune, and of St. Jean and St. Porçain. He drank Malvoisin, and Montrose, and Vernage, and Runey. He drank the wines of Greece, both Patras and Farnese; he drank spiced beers; he drank muscatel; and he drank hypocras. He did not ignore the cider nor the pear cider; to the sweet white sparkling wine of Volnay he confessed, and he exhibited, an especial predilection; and he drank copiously, also, of the Alsatian sherry and of the Hungarian tokay.

Thereafter Ninzian went homeward with a pleasurable at-randomness, for which—in a so liberal contributor to every pious cause and persecution,—appropriate allowances were made by St. Holmendis and everybody else except one person only. Ninzian was married.

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_51._
_The Queer Bird_

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THE next evening Ninzian and his wife were walking in the garden. They were a handsome couple, and the high-hearted love that had been between them in their youth was a tale which many poets had embroidered. It was an affection, too, which had survived its consummation with so slight impairment that Ninzian during the long while since he had promised eternal fidelity was not known to have begotten but one by-blow. Even that, as he was careful to explain, was by way of charity: for well-thought-of rich old Pettipas, the pawnbroker at Beauvillage, had lived childlessly with his buxom young second wife for nearly three years before Ninzian, in odd moments, provided this deserving couple with a young heiress.

But in the main Ninzian preferred his own lean and pietistic wife above all other women, even so long after he had won her in the heyday of their adventurous youth. Now they who were in the evening of life were lighted by a golden sunset as they went upon a flagged walkway, made of white and blue stones; and to either side were the small glossy leaves and the crimson flowering of well-tended rose-bushes. They waited thus for Holy Holmendis, their fellow laborer in multifarious forms of church work and social betterment, for the saint had promised to have supper with them. And Balthis (for that was the name of Ninzian’s wife) said, “Look, my dear, and tell me what is that?”

Ninzian inspected the flower-bed by the side of the walkway, and he replied, “My darling, it appears to be the track of a bird.”

“But surely there is in Poictesme no fowl with a foot so huge!”

“No. But many migratory monsters pass by in the night, on their way north, at this time of year: and, clearly, one of some rare species has paused here to rest. However, as I was telling you, my pet, we have now in hand—”

“Why, but think of it, Ninzian! The print is as big as a man’s foot!”

“Come, precious, you exaggerate! It is the track of a largish bird,—an eagle, or perhaps a roc, or, it may be, the Zhar-Ptitza paused here,—but it is nothing remarkable. Besides, as I was telling you, we have already in hand, for the edifying of the faithful, a bit of Mary Magdalene’s haircloth, the left ring-finger of John the Baptist, a suit of Dom Manuel’s underclothes, and one of the smaller stones with which St. Stephen was martyred—”

But Balthis, he saw now, was determined not to go on in talk about the church which Ninzian had builded in honor of Manuel the Redeemer, and which Ninzian was stocking with very holy relics. Instead, she asserted with deliberation, “Ninzian, I think it is fully as big as a man’s foot.”

“Well, be it as you like, my pet!”

“But I will not be put off in that way! Do you tread beside it in the flower-bed there, and, by comparing the print of your foot with the bird track, we shall easily see which is the larger.”

Ninzian was not so ruddy as he had been. Yet he said with dignity, and lightly enough, he hoped:

“Balthis, you are unreasonable. I do not intend to get my sandals all over mud to settle any such foolish point. The track is just the size of a man’s foot, or it is much larger than a man’s foot, or it is smaller than a man’s foot,—it is, in fine, of any size which you prefer. And we will let that be the end of it.”

“So, Ninzian, you will not tread in that new-digged earth?” said Balthis, queerly.

“Of course I will not ruin my second-best sandals for any such foolish reason!”

“You trod there yesterday in your very best sandals, Ninzian, for the reason that you were tipsy. I saw the print you made there, in broad daylight, Ninzian, when you had just come from drinking with a blessed saint himself, and were reeling all over the neat ways of my garden. Ninzian, it is a fearful thing to know that when your husband walks in mud he leaves tracks like a bird.”

Now Ninzian was truly penitent for yesterday’s over-indulgence. And Ninzian said:

“So, you have discovered this foible of mine, after all my carefulness! That is a great pity.”

Balthis replied, with the cold non-committalness of wives, “Pity or no, you will now have to tell me the truth about it.”

That task did, in point of fact, seem so appallingly unavoidable that Ninzian settled down to it, with such airiness as would have warned any wife in the world exactly how far to trust him.

“Well, my darling, you must know that when I first came into Poictesme, I came rather unwillingly. Our friend St. Holmendis, I need not tell you, was, even in the time of Dom Manuel’s incarnation in frail human flesh, setting such a very high moral tone hereabouts, and the holy man is so impetuous with his miracles when anybody differs with him on religious matters, that the prospect was not alluring. But it was necessary that my prince should have some representative here, as in all other places. So I came, from—well, from down yonder—”

“I know you came from the South, Ninzian! Everybody knows that. But that appears to me no excuse whatever for walking like a bird.”

“As if, my dearest, it could give me any pleasure to walk like a bird, or like a whole covey of birds! To the contrary, I have always found this small accomplishment in doubtful taste, it exposes one to continual comment. But very long ago those who had served my prince with especial distinction were all put upon this footing, in order that true demerit might be encouraged, and that fine sportsmanship might be preserved, and so that, also, our adversaries in the great game might be detecting us.”

Now Balthis fixed on him wide, scornful, terrible eyes. After a breathless while she said:

“Ninzian, I understand. You are an evil spirit, and you came out of hell in the appearance of a man to work wickedness in Poictesme!”

And his Balthis, as he saw with a pang of wild regret, was horribly upset and grieved to know the thing which her husband had so long hid away from her; and Ninzian began to feel rather ashamed of not having trusted her with this secret, now it was discovered. At all events, he would try what being reasonable might do.

“Darling,” said he, with patient rationality, “no sensible wife will ever pry into what her husband may have been or done before she married him. Her concern is merely with his misdemeanors after that ceremony; and, I think, you have had no heavy reason to complain. Nobody can for one moment assert that in Poictesme I have not led an appallingly upright and immaculate existence.”

She said, indignantly: “You had fear of Holmendis! You came all this long way to do your devil work, and then had not the pluck to face him!”

Ninzian found this just near enough the truth to be irritating. So he spoke now with airy condescension.

“Precious, it is true the lean man can work miracles, but then, without desiring to appear boastful, I must tell you that I have mastery of a more venerable and blacker magic. Oh, I assure you, he could not have exorcised or excommunicated or tried any other of his sacerdotal trick-work upon me without sweating for it! Still, it seemed better to avoid such painful scenes: for when one has trouble with these saints the supporters of both sides are apt to intervene; the skies are blackened and the earth shakes, and whirlwinds and meteors and thunderbolts and seraphim upset things generally: and it all seems rather boisterous and old-fashioned. So it really did appear more sensible, and in better taste, to respect, at all events during his lifetime, the well-meaning creature’s religious convictions—in which you share, I know, my pet,—and, well!” said Ninzian, with a shrug, “to temporize! to keep matters comfortable all around, you understand, my darling, by evincing a suitable interest in church work and in whatever else appeared expected of the reputable in my surroundings.”

But Balthis was not to be soothed. “Ninzian, this is a terrible thing for me to be learning! There was never a husband who better knew his place, and the only baby you ever upset me with is at the pawnbroker’s, and Holy Church has not ever had a more loyal servitor—”

“No,” Ninzian said, quietly.

“—But you have been a hideous demon in deep hell, and the man that I have loved is a false seeming, and the moment St. Holmendis ascends to bliss you mean to go on with your foul iniquities. That is foolish of you, because of course I would never permit it. But, even so—! Oh, Ninzian, my faith and my happiness are buried now in the one grave, now that all ends between us!”

Ninzian asked, still very quietly: “And do you think I will leave you, my Balthis, because of some disarranged fresh earth? Could any handful of dirt have parted us when because of my great love for you I fought the seven knights at Évre—”

“What chance had the poor fellows against a devil!”

“It is the principle of the thing, my darling,—as well as the mathematics. Also, as I was going on to observe, you would never have been flinging mud in my face when for your sake I overthrew Duke Oribert and his deplorable custom of the cat and the serpent, and cast the Spotted Dun of Lorcha down from a high hill.”

She answered without pity: “You will be lucky to get out of this mud with a whole skin. For it is on this evening of the month that St. Holmendis hears my confession, and I must confess everything, and you know as well as I do of his devastating miracles.”

Ninzian, having thus failed in his appeal to the better qualities of his wife, forthwith returned to soliciting her powers of reason.

“Balthis, my sweet, now, after all, what complaint have you against me? You cannot help feeling that the no doubt ill-advised rebellion in which I was concerned in youth, unarithmeticable æons before this Earth was thought of, took place quite long enough ago to be forgotten. Besides, you know by experience that I am only too easily guided by others, that I have never learned, as you so eloquently phrase it, to have any backbone. And I do not really see, either, how you can want to punish me to-day for iniquities which, you grant, I have not ever committed, but—so you assume, without any warrant known to me—have just vaguely thought of committing by and by, and it may be, not for years to come—my adorable pouting darling—because this stringy Holmendis seems tough as whit-leather—”

Ninzian’s stammered talking died away. He saw there was no moving her.

“No, Ninzian, I simply cannot stand having a husband who walks like a bird, and is liable to be detected the next time it rains. It would be on my mind day and night, and people would say all sorts of things. No, Ninzian, it is quite out of the question. I will get your things together at once, and you can go to hell or over to that giggling ill-bred friend of yours at the pawnbroker’s nasty shop, just as you elect: and I leave it to your conscience if, after the way I have worked and slaved for you, you had the right to play this wrong and treachery upon me.”

And Balthis said also: “For it is a great wrong and treachery which you have played upon me, Ninzian of Yair, getting from me such love as men will not find the equal of in any of the noble places of this world until the end of life and time. This is a deep wound that you have given me. Upon your lips were wisdom and pleasant talking, there was kindliness in the gray eyes of Ninzian of Yair, your hands were strong at sword-play, and you were the most generous of companions all through the daytime and in the nighttime too. These things I delighted in, these things I regarded: I did not think of the low mire, I could not see what horrible markings your passing by had left to this side and to that side.”

Then Balthis said: “Let every woman weep with me, for I now know that to every woman’s loving is this end appointed. There is no woman that gives all to any man, but that woman is wasting her substance at bed and board with a greedy stranger, and there is no wife who escapes the bitter hour in which that knowledge smites her. So now let us touch hands, and now let our lips too part friendlily, because our bodies have so long been friends, the while that we knew nothing of each other, Ninzian of Yair, on account of the great wrong and treachery which you have played upon me.”

Thus speaking, Balthis kissed him. Then she went into the house that was no longer Ninzian’s home.

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_52._
_Remorse of a Poor Devil_

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NINZIAN sat on a stone bench which was carved at each end with a crouching sphinx, and he waited there while the sunlight died away behind the poplars. The moment could not but seem to anybody pregnant with all danger. Holmendis was coming, and Holmendis would very soon be hearing the confession of Balthis, and these saints were over-often the prey of an excitability which damaged their cause.

That impetuous Holmendis was quite as apt as not to resort out of hand to unbridled miracle-working, and with the fires of Heaven to annihilate his leading fellow laborer in every exercise of altruistic intermeddling,—without pausing, rationally, to reflect what an annihilation the resultant scandal would be to Holmendis’ own party of reform and uplift. Holmendis would no doubt be sorry afterward: but he would get no sympathy from Ninzian.

And, meanwhile, Ninzian loved his wife so greatly that prolonged existence without her did not tempt him. His wife, whoever she might be, had always seemed peculiarly dear to Ninzian. And now, as he looked back upon the exceeding love which he had borne his wife, in Nineveh and Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Rome and Byzantium, and in all other cities that bred fine women, and as he weighed the evanescence of this love which was evading him after these few thousand years, it seemed to Ninzian a pitiable thing that his season of earthly contentment should thus be cut off in its flower and withered untimelily.

And his conscience troubled him, too. For the fiend had not been entirely candid with his Balthis, and Poictesme was not by any means the stage of the complaisant easy-going fellow’s primal failure. So he now forlornly thought of how utterly he had failed in his mission upon Earth, ever since he first came to Mount Kaf to work evil among men, in the time of King Tchagi, a great while before the Deluge; and he considered with dismay the appalling catalogue of virtuous actions into which these women had betrayed him.

For always the cause of Ninzian’s downfall had been the same: he would get to talking indiscretion to some lovely girl or another, just through his desire to be agreeable to everybody, and his devilish eloquence would so get the better of her that the girl would invariably marry him and ruthlessly set about making her husband a well-thought-of citizen. Nor did it avail him to argue. Women nowhere appeared to have any sympathy with Ninzian’s appointed labor upon Earth: they seemed to have an instinctive bent toward Heaven and the public profession of every virtue. Just as in the case of that poor Miramon Lluagor, Ninzian reflected, Ninzian’s wife also did not care two straws about her husband’s career and the proper development of his talents.

Then Ninzian on a sudden recollected the cause of the disturbance which had been put upon his living. He drew his dagger, and, squatting on the paved walkway, he scratched out that incriminating footprint.

He was none too soon.

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_53._
_Continuation of Appalling Pieties_

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HE was none too soon, because Ninzian rose from this erasement just in time to bump into no other than the energetic tough flesh of Holy Holmendis, who in the cool of the evening was coming up the walkway; and indeed, in rising, Ninzian jostled against the saint rather roughly. So Ninzian apologized for his clumsiness, and explained that he was going fishing the next day, and was digging for worms: and Ninzian was in a bad taking, for he could not know how much this peppery and over-excitable saint from out of Philistia had seen or suspected, or might be up to the very next moment with one or another bull-headed miracle.

But Holy Holmendis said friendlily that no bones were broken, and he went on, with the soul-chilling joviality of the clergy, to make some depressing joke about fishers of men. “And that is why I am here,” said the saint, “for this evening Dame Balthis is to confess to me whatever matters may be on her conscience.”

“Yes, yes,” said Ninzian, fondly, “but we both know, my dear and honored friend, that Balthis has a particularly tender conscience, a conscience which is as sensitive to the missteps of others as a sore toe.”

“That is how everybody’s conscience ought to be,” returned the saint: and he went on to speak of the virtuous woman who is a crown to her husband. And he made a contrast between the fine high worth of Balthis and the shamelessness of that bad beggar-woman upon whom, just outside the gate, the saint had put apoplexy and divine fire for speaking over-lightly of the second coming of Manuel.

Ninzian fidgeted. He of course said sympathizingly that he would send some servants to remove the blasted carcass, and that it ought to be a lesson, and that there was no telling what the world was coming to unless right-thinking persons took strong steps through the proper channels. Nevertheless, he did not like the hard, pinched little mouth and glittering, very pale blue eyes of this gaunt saint; and the nimbus about the thick white hair of Holy Holmendis was beginning to shine brighter and brighter as the dusk of evening thickened. Ninzian found it uncomfortable to be alone with this worker of miracles; piety is in all things so unpredictable: and Ninzian was unfeignedly glad when Balthis came out of the loved house that was no longer Ninzian’s home, and when Balthis held open the door for Holmendis to enter where Ninzian might not come any more.

Yet, so tenacious is the charitableness of women, that even now, as Holmendis went in, Dame Balthis tried to speak, for the last time, sensibly and kindly with her husband.

“Pig with the head of a mule,” she said, in a lowered tone, “do you stop looking at me like a sick calf, and go away! For I must confess in what a state of sin I have been living, as a devil’s wife, and I have little faith in your black magic, and you know as well as I do that there is no telling what blasted tree-trunk or consecrated bottle or something of that sort he may seal you up in until the holy Morrow of Judgment, precisely as he has done all those other evil spirits.”

Ninzian replied, “I shall not ever leave you of my free will.”

“But, Ninzian, it is as if I were putting you into the bottle, myself! For if I do not tell that spiteful old bag of bones”—she crossed herself,—“I mean, that beloved and blessed saint, why, he would never have the sense, or rather, I intended to say that his faith in his fellow creatures is too great and admirable for him ever to suspect you, and so you just see how it is!”

“Yes, my most cruel love,” said Ninzian, “it is quite as if you yourself were thrusting me into a brazen bottle, for all that you know how dependent I am on open-air exercise, and as if you were setting to it the unbreakable seal of Sulieman-ben-Daoud with your own dear hands. But, nevertheless—!”

He took her hand, and gallantly he kissed her finger-tips.

At that she boxed his jaws. “You need not think to make a fool of me! no, not again, not after all these years! Oh, but I will show you!”

Then Balthis also went into the house where the gaunt saint was making ready to hear her mensual confession.

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_54._
_Magic That was Rusty_

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POOR-SPIRITED, over-easy-going Ninzian sat upon the stone bench, an outcast now in his own garden: and he thought for a while about the pitiless miracles with which this Holmendis had harried the fairies and the elves and the salamanders and the trolls and the calcars and the succubæ and all the other amiable iniquities of Poictesme; and about the saint’s devastating crusades against moral laxity and free-thinking and the curt conclusions which he had made with his ropes and his fires to the existence of mere heresy. It seemed uncomfortably likely that in dealing with a devil this violent and untactful Holmendis would go to even greater lengths, and would cast off all compunction, if somehow Ninzian could not get the better of him.

So Ninzian decided to stay upon the safe side of accident, by destroying the fellow out of hand. Ninzian took from his pocket the stone ematille, and he broke off a branch from a rose-bush. With the flowering rose branch Ninzian traced a largish circle about his sleek person, saying, “I infernalize unto myself the circumference of nine feet about me.” Here the sign of Sargatanet was repeated by him thrice. Then Ninzian went on, “From the east, Glavrab; from the west, Garron; from the north—”

He paused. He scratched his head. The boreal word of power was Cabinet or Cabochon or Capricorn or something of that kind, he knew: but what it was exactly was exactly what Ninzian had forgotten. He would have to try something else.

Ninzian therefore turned to the overthrowing of Holmendis by cold and by heat. Ninzian said:

“I invoke thee who art in the empty wind, terrible, invisible, all-potent contriver of destruction and bringer of desolation. I upraise before thee that rod from which proceeds the life abhorrent to thee. I invoke thee through thy veritable name, in virtue of which thou canst not refuse to hear,—JOERBET-JOPAKER-BETH-JOBOLCHOSETH—”

But there he gave it up. That dreadful, jaw-cracking obscene appellation had, Ninzian recollected, eleven more sections: but in bewildered Ninzian’s mind they were all jumbled and muddled and hopelessly confused.

After that a rather troubled High Bailiff rearranged his clothing; and he now tried to get in touch with Nebiros, the Field-Marshal and Inspector General of Hell. But again Ninzian was in his magic deplorably rusty.

“_Agla, Tagla, Malthon, Oarios_—” he rattled off, handily enough,—and once more he bogged in an appalling stretch of unrememberably difficult words. Black magic was not an accomplishment in which you could stay expert without continual practice; and Ninzian had regrettably neglected all infernal arts for the last five centuries and over.

So in this desperate pinch he turned perforce to a simple abecedary conjuration such as mere wizards used; and the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra said, rather shame-facedly, “Prince Lucifer, most dreadful master of all the Revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy mighty minister, Lucifugé Rofocalé, being desirous to make a pact with him—”

And Ninzian got through this invocation at least, quite nicely, though he a trifle bungled the concluding words from the Grand Clavicle.

This conjuration, however, worked a bit too well. For instead of the hoped-for appearance of genial old Lucifugé Rofocalé endurably disinfected of his usual odor, now came to Ninzian, from among the sweet-smelling rose-bushes, the appearance of a proud gentleman in gold and sable: and a rather perturbed Ninzian bowed very low before his liege-lord, Lucifer, Prince over all the Fallen Angels.

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_55._
_The Prince of Darkness_

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THE newcomer paused for an instant, as if he were reading what was in the troubled mind of Ninzian, and then he said: “I see. Surkrag, whom mortals hereabouts call Ninzian! O unfaithful servant, now must you be punished for betraying the faith I put in you. Now is your requital coming swiftly from this ravening saint, who will dispose of you without mercy. For your conjuring would disgrace a baby in diapers; you have forgotten long ago what little magic you ever knew; and when this Holmendis gets hold of you with one hand and exorcises you with the other, there will be hardly a cinder left.”

So did Ninzian know himself to stand friendlessly, between the wrath of evil and the malignity of holiness, both bent upon his ruin. He said, “Have patience, my prince!”

But Lucifer answered sternly: “My patience is outworn. No, Surkrag, there is no hope for you, and you become shameless in perfidy as steadily you go from good to better. Once you would have scorned the least deviation from the faith you owe me: but a little by a little you have made compromises with virtue, through your weak desire to live comfortably with your wives, and this continual indulgence of women’s notions is draining from you the last drop of wickedness. Not fifty centuries ago you would have been shocked by a kindly thought. Twenty centuries back and you at least retained a proper feeling toward the Decalogue. Now you assist in all reforms and build churches without a blush. For is there nowadays, my deluded, lost Surkrag! in candor, is there any virtue howsoever exalted, is there a single revolting decency or any form of godliness, before which your gorge rises? No, my poor friend: you came hither to corrupt mankind, and instead they have made you little worse than human.”

The Angel of Darkness paused. He had spoken, as became such a famous gentleman, very temperately, without rage, but also without any concealing of his sorrow and disappointment. And Ninzian answered, contritely:

“My prince, I have not wholly kept faith, I know. But always the woman tempted me with the droll notion that our sports ought to open with a religious service, and so I have been now and then seduced into marriage. And my wife, no matter what eyes and hair and tint of flesh she might be wearing at the time, has always been bent upon having her husband looked up to by the neighbors; and in such circumstances a poor devil has no chance.”

“So that these women have been your ruin, and even now the latest of them is betraying your secret to that implacable saint! Well, it is honest infernal justice, for since the time of Kaïumarth you have gained me not one follower in this place, and have lived openly in all manner of virtue when you should have been furthering my power upon Earth.”

Thus speaking, Lucifer took his seat upon the bench. Then Ninzian too sat down, and Ninzian leaned toward this other immortal, in the ever-thickening dusk; and Ninzian’s plump face was sad.

“My prince, what does it matter? From the first I have let my fond wife have her will with me, because it pleased her, and did no real good. What do these human notions matter, even in so dear a form? A little while and Balthis will be dead. A little while and there will be no Yair nor Upper Ardra, and no shining holy sepulchre at Storisende, and all Poictesme will be forgotten. A little while and this Earth will be an icecold cinder. But you and I shall still be about our work, still playing for the universe, with stars and suns for counters. Does it really matter to you that, for the time this tiny trundling Earth exists and has women on it, I pause from playing at the great game, to entertain myself with these happy accidents of nature?”

Lucifer replied: “It is not only your waste of time that troubles me. It is your shirking of every infernal duty, it is your cherubic lack of seriousness. Why, do you but think how many thousand women have passed through your fingers!”

“Yes, like a string of pearls, my prince,” said Ninzian, fondly.

“Is that not childish sport for you that used to contend so mightily in the great game?”

But Ninzian now was plucking up heart, as the saying is, hand over fist. “Recall the old days, my prince,” he urged, with the appropriate emotional quaver, “when we two were only cherubs, with no bodies as yet sprouted from our little curly heads! Do you recall the merry romps and the kissing games we had as tiny angel-faces, sporting together so lovingly among the golden clouds of heaven, without any cares whatever, and with that collar of wings tickling so drolly one’s ears! and do you let the memory move you, even to unmerited indulgence. I have contracted an odd fancy for this inconspicuous sphere of rock and mud, I like the women that walk glowingly about it. Oh, I concede my taste is disputable—”

“I dispute nothing, Surkrag. I merely point out that lechery is nowhere a generally received excuse for good works.”

“Well, but now and then,” said Ninzian, broadmindedly, “the most conscientious may slip into beneficence. And, in any case, how does it matter what I do on Earth? Frankly, my prince, I think you take the place too seriously. For centuries I have watched those who serve you going about this planet in all manner of quaint guises, in curious masks which are impenetrable to any one who does not know that your preëminent servitors tread with the footfall of a bird wherever they pass upon your errands—”

“Yes, but—” said Lucifer.

“—For ages,” Ninzian continued, without heeding him, “I have seen your emissaries devote much time and cunning to the tempting of men to commit wickedness: and to what end? Man rises from the dust: he struts and postures: he falls back into the dust. That is all. How can this midge work good or evil? His virtue passes as a thin scolding: the utmost reach of his iniquity is to indulge in the misdemeanor of supererogation, by destroying a man or two men, whom time would very soon destroy in any event. Meanwhile his sympathies incline—I know,—by a hair-breadth or so, toward Heaven. Yes, but what does it matter? is it even a compliment to Heaven? Ah, prince, had I the say, I would leave men to perish in their unimportant starveling virtues, without raising all this pother over trifles.”

Ninzian could see that he had made a perceptible impression: yet still, dark Lucifer was shaking his head. “Surkrag, in abstract reason you may be right: but warfare is not conducted by reason, and to surrender anything to the Adversary, though it were no more than Earth and its inhabitants, would be a dangerous example.”

“Come, prince, do you think how many first class constellations there are to strive for, made up of stars that are really desirable possessions! Turn that fine mind of yours to considerations worthy of it, sir! Consider Cassiopeia, and the Bull, and the dear little Triangle! and do you think about Orion, containing such sidereal masterpieces as Bellatrix and Betelgeuse and Rigel, and the most magnificent nebula known anywhere! Do you think also about that very interesting triple sun which is called Mizar, in the Great Bear, a veritable treasure for any connoisseur! and do you let me have this Earth to amuse me!”

Now Lucifer did not answer at once. The bats were out by this time, zigzagging about the garden: the air was touched with the scent of dew-drenched roses: and somewhere in the dusk a nightingale had tentatively raised its thrilling, long-drawn, plaintive voicing of desire. All everywhere about the two fiends was most soothing. And the Angel of Darkness laughed without a trace left in his manner of that earlier reserve.

“No, no, old wheedler! one cannot neglect the tiniest point, in the great game. Besides, I have my pride, I confess it, and to behold Earth given over entirely to good would vex me. Yet, after all, I can detect no unforgivable beneficence in your continuing to live virtuously here with your seraglio for such a while as the planet may last. These little holidays even freshen one for work. So, if you like, I will summon Amaimon or Baälzebub, or perhaps Succor-Benoth would enjoy the sport, and they will dispose of this two-penny saint.”

But Ninzian seemed hesitant. “My prince, I am afraid that some of those officious archangels would be coming too; and one thing might lead to another, and my wife would not at all like having any supernal battlings in her own garden, among her favorite rose-bushes. No, as I always say, it is much better to avoid these painful scenes.”

“Your wife!” said Lucifer, in high astonishment, “and is it that thin faded pious wretch you are considering! Why, but your wife has repudiated you! She has caught just your trick of treacherousness, and so she has betrayed you to that flint-hearted saint!”

Ninzian in the dusk made bold to smile....

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_56._
_Economics of Ninzian_

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NINZIAN in the dusk made bold to smile at this sort of bachelor talk. Lucifer really would be a bit more broad-minded, a shade less notably naïve, if only the dear fellow had not stayed always so stubbornly prejudiced against marriage, merely because it was a sacrament. All that was required, alike to perfect him in some real knowledge of human nature and to secure everybody’s well-being everywhere, Ninzian reflected, was for Lucifer just once to marry some capable woman....

So Ninzian smiled. But Ninzian did not need to say anything, for at this moment Balthis came to the door, and—not being able in the twilight to see the Prince of Darkness,—she called out that supper was getting stone-cold on the table, and that she really wished Ninzian would try to be a little more considerate, especially when they had company.

And Ninzian, rising, chuckled. “My wife has been like that since Sidon was a village. Time and again she has found me out; and never yet has she let me off with a public exposure. Oh, if I could explain it, I would perhaps care less for her. In part, I think, it means that she loves me: in part, I fear—upon looking back,—it means that no really conscientious person cares to entrust the proper punishment of her husband to anybody else. Of course, all that is merely theory. What is certain is that my wife’s confession has been conducted tactfully, and that you and I are going in to talk solemn nonsense with St. Holmendis.”

But Lucifer once more was shaking his head. He said, with firmness:

“No, Surkrag. No, I am not squeamish, but I have no use for saints.”

“Well, prince, I would not be over-hasty to agree with you. For Holmendis has some invaluable points. He is perfectly sincere, for one thing, and for another, he is energetic, and for a third, he never pardons any one who differs with him. Of course, he is all for having men better than they were intended to be, and with his tales about that second coming of Manuel he does frighten people.... For they have been altering that legend, my prince, considerably. Nowadays, it is not only glory and prosperity which Manuel is to bring back with him. He is to return also, it seems, with a large cargo of excruciate punishments for all persons who differ in any way with the notions of Holmendis and Niafer.”

“Ah, the old story! It is really astounding,” Lucifer commented, in frank wonder, “how one finds everywhere this legend of the Redeemer in just this form. It seems an instinct with the creatures.”

“Well, but,” said Ninzian, tolerantly, “it gives them something to look forward to. It promises to gratify all their congenital desires, including cruelty. And, above all, it prevents their going mad, to believe that somebody somewhere is looking out for them. In any event,—as I was saying,—this gaunt Holmendis does frighten Poictesme into a great deal of public piety. Still, there are always corners and bedrooms and other secluded places, in which one strikes a balance, as it were; and abstinence and fear make wonderful appetizers: so that, in the long run of affairs, I doubt if you have anywhere upon Earth any more serviceable friends than are these saints who will put up with nothing short of their own especial sort of perfection.”

Lucifer was not convinced. “It is proper of course that you should attempt to exculpate your friend and associate during the last twenty years. Nevertheless, all these extenuatory sayings, about the viciousness of virtue, are the habitual banalities of boyhood; and no beardless cynic, even when addicted to verse, has ever yet been permanently injured by them.”

“But,” Ninzian returned, “but here, I am not merely theorizing. I speak with rather high authority. For you will be remembering, prince, that, by the rules of our game, when any mortal has gained a hundred followers for you, Jahveh is penalized to put him upon the same footing as the rest of us. And, well, sir! you may see here in the mud, just where I jostled Holmendis from the walkway—”

Lucifer made luminous his finger-tips, and held them like five candles to the saint’s footprint. The Angel of Darkness bowed thereafter, with real respect, toward heaven.

“Our Adversary, to do Him justice, keeps an honest score. Come, Surkrag, now this is affecting! This very touchingly recalls that the great game is being played by the dear fellow with candor and fine sportsmanship. Meanwhile I must most certainly have supper with you; and the great game is far from over, since I yet make a fourth with the fanatic, the woman and the hypocrite.”

“Ah, prince,” said Ninzian, a little shocked, as they went into his sedate snug home, “should you not say more tactfully, with us three leaders of reform?”

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