Chapter XI: Book NINE: Above Paradise

“_He was caught up into paradise; and heard unspeakable words._”
—II CORINTHIANS, xii, 4.

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_57._
_Maugis Makes Trouble_

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NOW the tale speaks of the rebellion of Maugis, who was the son of Donander of Évre, the Thane of Aigremont. For Count Manuel’s youngest child, Ettarre, born after her father’s passing, was now come to the full flowering of her strange beauty: and it was at this time—with the result that two young gentlemen went out of their wits, four killed themselves, and seven married,—that Ettarre was betrothed to Guiron des Rocques, of the famous house of Gâtinais. And it was at this time also that young Maugis d’Aigremont resorted to a more stirring solace than might be looked for in imbecility or death or a vicarious bedfellow. He seized and carried off Ettarre. His company of ten was pursued by Count Emmerick and Guiron with twenty followers; and after a skirmish in Bovion the girl was recaptured unharmed.

But Maugis escaped. And after that he went into open rebellion against Count Emmerick’s authority, and occupied those fastnesses in the Taunenfels which Othmar Black-Tooth had once held for a long while against the assaults of Count Manuel himself.

History in fine appeared to honor banality by repeating itself, with the plain difference that gaunt Maugis was equally a great captain and a great lover and in every way more formidable than Othmar had been, whereas Emmerick, elsewhere than at a banquet, was not formidable at all. Moreover, Emmerick in these days lacked even any stronger kinsman to lean upon, for his brother-in-law Heitman Michael was now in Muscovy, the young Count of Montors was dead, and Ayrart de Montors had removed to the court of King Theodoret. Emmerick had, thus, to lead his troops only Fauxpas de Nointel and that unreasonable Guiron, who expected Emmerick himself to lead them.

So Emmerick wavered; he made terms; he even winked at Guiron’s capture by the pirates of Caer Idryn, in order to be rid of this troublesome posturer who insisted upon dragging Emmerick into so much uncomfortable fighting: and Maugis, since these terms did not include his possession of Ettarre, soon broke them. Thus the warring that now arose in Poictesme, between Maugis’ lust and Count Emmerick’s supineness, dragged on for many wearying fevered years.

Then Madame Melicent returned from oversea with her second husband, the Comte de la Fôret, a gentleman who remarkably lacked patience with brigands and with shilly-shallying. This Perion de la Fôret took charge of matters, with such resolution that out of hand Guiron was rescued from his captivity, Maugis was overpowered and killed, the Ettarre whom he had desired to his own hurt was married to Guiron, and Count Emmerick gave a banquet in honor of the event. Such was this Perion’s impetuosity.

It is of these matters that the tale speaks in passing. For the tale now is of Donander of Évre, who was the father of Maugis, and who would not break faith with that Emmerick who, howsoever unworthily, sat in the place of that great master whom Donander had been privileged to serve even in this mortal life. For Donander was the only one of the lords of the Silver Stallion who accepted with joy and with unbounded faith the legend of Manuel, and who in all his living bore testimony to it.

This Donander of Évre had been the youngest of the fellowship, he was at this time but newly made a widower while yet in his forties, and whatsoever he lacked in brilliance of wit he atoned for with his hardiness in battle. Yet in this war he chose not to display his prowess, since the fighting was between the son of Dom Manuel and the son of Donander himself. He chose instead exile.

First, though, he went to Storisende; and, standing beside the holy sepulchre, he looked up for some while at the serene great effigy of Manuel, poised there in eternal watchfulness over Donander’s native land, and bright with all the jewels of the world. Donander knelt and prayed in this sacred place, as he knew, for the last time. Then Donander, without any complaining, and without any grieving now for his wife’s death, went out of Poictesme, a landless man; and he piously took service under Prince Balein of Targamon (the same that twenty years ago had wooed Queen Morvyth, a little before the evil times of her long imprisonment and the cutting off of her head), who now was harrying the pagan Northmen.

Thus it was that Donander also at the last went out of Poictesme, not by his own election, to encounter the most strange of all the dooms which befell the lords of the Silver Stallion after the passing of Dom Manuel.

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_58._
_Showing that Even Angels May Err_

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THIS doom began its workings in the long field below Rathgor, when Palnatoki rode forth and made his brag. “I am the champion of the Ænseis. In the Northland there is nobody mightier than I; and if a mightier person live elsewhere, it is not yet proven. Who is there in this place will try a fall with me?”

Behind him the pagan army waited, innumerable, and terrible, and deplorably ill-mannered. These shouted now:

“We cry a holmgang. Who will fight with Red Palnatoki, that is overlord of the Swan’s bath, and that slew the giants in Noenhir?”

Then from the opposed ranks came clanking, and shining in full armor, Donander of Évre. And he said:

“I, howsoever unworthy, messire, am the person who will withstand you. I also have fought before this morning. Under Count Manuel’s banner of the Silver Stallion I have done what I might. That much I will again do here to-day, and upon every day between this day and the holy Morrow of Judgment.”

After that the Christian army shouted: “There is none mightier than Donander! Also, he is very gratifyingly modest.”

But Palnatoki cried out scornfully: “Your utmost will not avail this morning! Behind me musters all the might of the Ænseis, that are the most high of gods above Lærath, and their strength shall be shown here through me.”

“Behind the endeavors of every loyal son of the Church,” Donander said, “are the blessed saints and the bright archangels.”

“Indeed, Donander, that may very well be the truth,” replied Red Palnatoki. “The old gods and the gods of Rome have met to-day; and we are their swords.”

“Your gods confess their weakness, Messire Palnatoki, by picking the better weapon,” Donander answered him, courteously.

With these amenities discharged, they fought. Nowhere upon earth could have been found a pair of more stalwart warriors: each had no equal anywhere existent between seas and mountains save in his adversary: so neatly were they matched indeed that, after a half-hour of incredible battling, it was natural enough they should kill each other simultaneously. And then the unfortunate error occurred, just as each naked soul escaped from the dying body.

For now out of the north came Kjalar, the fair guide of pagan warriors to eternal delights in the Hall of the Chosen; and from the zenith sped, like a shining plummet, Ithuriel to fetch the soul of the brave champion of Christendom to the felicities of the golden city walled about with jasper of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Both emissaries had been attending the combat until the arrival of their part therein; both, as seasoned virtuosi of warfare, had been delighted by this uncommonly fine fight: and in their pleased excitement they somehow made the error of retrieving each the other’s appointed prey. It happened thus that the soul of Donander of Évre fared northward, asleep in the palm of Kjalar’s hand, while Ithuriel conveyed the soul of Red Palnatoki to the heaven of Jahveh.

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_59._
_The Conversion of Palnatoki_

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ITHURIEL’S blunder, it is gratifying to record, did not in the outcome really matter. For Christendom just then was at heated odds over points of theology not very clearly understood in Jahveh’s heaven, where in consequence no decisions were hazarded upon the merits of the controversy; and the daily invoices of Christian champions and martyrs of all sects were being admitted to blessedness as fast as they murdered one another.

Moreover, Red Palnatoki was, by the articles of his stern Nordic creed, a fatalist. When he discovered what had happened, and the strange salvation which had been put upon him, his religion therefore assured him that this too had been predestined by the wayward Norns, and he piously made no complaining. The eternal life which he had inherited, with no fighting in it for the present, and no stronger drink than milk, was not up to human expectation, but the tall sea-rover had long ago found out that few things are. Meanwhile he could, at any rate, look forward to that promised last great battle, when those praiseworthy captains Gog and Magog (with, as Palnatoki understood it, a considerable company of fine fighting-men), would attack the four-square city, and when Palnatoki would have again a chance really to enjoy himself in defending the camp of the saints.

And meanwhile too, he was interested in those girls. It seemed at best to any one with his religious rearing quite unaccountable to find women in heaven, and this especial pair appeared to Palnatoki a remarkably quaint choice for exceptional favoritism. He could only deduce they had got in through some error similar to that which had procured his own admission, particularly as he saw no other women anywhere about.

And Palnatoki reflected that the enceinte lady, with eagle’s wings and the crown of little stars, whom the presumably pet dragon followed everywhere with touching devotion, could not for as yet some months repay cultivating. But that very pretty brunette, with the golden cup and all those splendid clothes and with the placard on her forehead, who had just ridden by upon that seven-headed scarlet monster, rather took Palnatoki’s fancy. That girl was not, you could see, a prude; she had come very near winking at him, if she, indeed, had not actually winked in the moment she glanced back: so that the Great Whore of Babylon (which, as they told him, was this second lady’s name) gave him, upon the whole, something else to look forward to.

Without any sulking under his halo, Palnatoki bent resolutely to his first harp-lesson; and, in place of protests, civilly voiced alleluias.

For, with two fine to-morrows to look forward to, Palnatoki was content enough. And in Jahveh’s heaven, therefore, all went agreeably, and as smoothly as Red Palnatoki at just this point goes out of this story.

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_60._
_In the Hall of the Chosen_

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WHEN Donander of Évre awoke in the Northern paradise, he also was content enough. It was a strange and not what you could call a cozy place, this gold-roofed hall with its five hundred and forty mile-wide doors: and the monsters, in the likeness of a stag and of a she-goat, which straddled above the building perpetually feeding upon the lower leaves of the great tree called Lærath, seemed to Donander preëminently outlandish creatures, animals under whose bellies no really considerate persons would have erected a residence. Yet, like Palnatoki, Donander of Évre was an old campaigner, who could be tolerably comfortable anywhere. Nor was to discover himself among pagans a novel experience, since in his mortal life Donander had ridden at adventure in most corners of the world, and rather more than half of his finest enemies and of his opponents in many delightful encounters had been infidels.

“Excepting always their unfortunate religious heresies,” he was used to concede, “I have no fault to pick with heathen persons, whom in the daily and nocturnal affairs of life I have found quite as friendly and companionable as properly baptized ladies.”

In fine, he got on well enough with the flaxen-haired spirits of these Northern kings and skalds and jarls and vikingar. They stared, and some guffawed, when he fitted out a little shrine, in which Donander prayed decorously, every day at the correct hours, for the second coming of Manuel and for the welfare of Donander’s soul upon the holy Morrow of Judgment. Yet, after all, these boreal ghosts conceded, in paradise if anywhere a man should be permitted utterly to follow his own tastes, even in imaginative eschatology. And when they talked their really pathetic nonsense about being the guests of Sidvrar the Weaver and Constrainer, and about living forever through his bounty thus happily in the Hall of the Chosen, it was Donander’s turn to shrug. Even had there been no other discrepancies, everybody knew that heaven had, not five hundred and forty golden gates, but only twelve entrances, each carved from a single pearl and engraved with the name of a tribe of Israel.

“Besides,” Donander asked, “who is this Weaver and Constrainer? Certainly, I never heard of him before.”

“He is the King and Father of the Ænseis,” they told him. “He is overlord of that unimaginable folk who dwell in Ydalir; and who do not kill their deformed and weakling children, as we were used to do, but instead cast from the ivory ramparts of Ydalir all such degenerate offspring, to be the gods of races who are not blond and Nordic.”

Donander, as a loyal son of the Church, could only shake his head over such nonsense, and the innumerous other errors by which these heathen were being misled to everlasting ruin. Aloud, Donander repeated his final verdict as to the pretensions of this Sidvrar, by saying again, “I never heard of him.”

Nevertheless, Donander went without real discontent among the pleasures of paradise, and he joined in all the local sports. In common with the other dead, he ate the flesh of the inexhaustible boar, and with them he drank of the strong mead which sustained them in perpetual tipsiness. And he sedately rode out with the others every morning into the meadows where these blessed pagan lords fought joyously among themselves until midday. At noon a peal of thunder would sound, the slain and wounded warriors were of a sudden revivified and cured of their hurts, and were reunited to whatsoever arms and heads and legs the contestants had lost in their gaming: and the company would return fraternally to the gold-roofed hall, where they ate and drank and made their brags until they slept.

“Yet perhaps our banquets might, messieurs,” Donander had suggested, after a century or so of these rough-and-ready pleasures, “be not unadvantageously seasoned with the delights of feminine companionship, if only for dessert?”

“But it is one of our appointed blessings to have done with women and their silly ways,” cried out the vikingar, “now that we have entered paradise.”

And Donander, who had always been notable for his affectionate nature, and who had served vigorously so many ladies par amours, seemed grieved to hear a saying so unchivalrous. Still, he said nothing.

Thus much time passed; and the worlds were changed: but in the eyes of Donander of Évre, as in the eyes of all who feasted in the Hall of the Chosen, there was no knowledge nor any fear of time, because these blessed dead lived now in perpetual tipsiness. And, as befitted a loyal son of the Church, Donander, without any complaining, in the surroundings which Heaven out of Heaven’s wisdom had selected for him, awaited the second coming of Manuel and the holy Morrow of Judgment.

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_61._
_Vanadis, Dear Lady of Reginlief_

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THEN, from the highest part of this paradise, and from the unimaginable yew-vales of Ydalir which rise above the topmost branches of the tree called Lærath, descended blue-robed Vanadis, the lady of Reginlief, dear to the Ænseis. She had disposed of five inefficient husbands, in impetuous mythological manners, but still a loneliness and a desire was upon her; and with the eternal optimism of widowhood she came to look for a sixth husband among these great-thewed heroes who jeered at women and their wiles.

But Donander of Évre was the person who for two reasons found instant favor in her eyes when she came upon Donander refreshing himself after the pleasant fatigues of that morning’s combat, and about his daily bath in the shining waters of the river Gipul. So did the dead call that stream which flowed from the antlers of the monstrous stag who stood eternally nibbling and munching above the Hall of the Chosen.

“Here is an eminently suitable person,” Vanadis reflected. Aloud, she said, “Hail, friend! and does a stout fine fellow of your length and of your thickness go languidly shunning work or seeking work?”

Stalwart Donander climbed out of the clear stream of Gipul. He came, smilingly and with a great exaltation, toward the first woman whom he had seen in seven hundred years. And, so constant is the nature of woman, that divine Vanadis regarded Donander in just the reflective wonder with which, more than seven hundred years ago, barbarian Utsumé had looked at Coth in the market-place of Porutsa.

Donander said, “What is your meaning, madame?”

Vanadis replied, “I have a desire which, a fine portent has informed me, agrees with your desire.”

Then Vanadis, with god-like candor, made wholly plain her meaning. And since Donander’s nature was affectionate, he assented readily enough to the proposals of this somewhat ardent but remarkably handsome young woman, who went abroad thus unconventionally in a car drawn by two cats, and who, in her heathenish and figurative way, described herself as a goddess. He stipulated only that, so soon as he was dressed, they be respectably united according to whatever might be the marriage laws of her country and diocese.

The Ænseis were not used in such matters to stand upon ceremony. Nevertheless, they conferred together,—Aduna and Ord and Hleifner and Rönn and Giermivul, and the other radiant sons of Sidvrar. It was they who good-humoredly devised a ceremony, with candles and promises and music and a gold ring, and all the other features which seemed expected by the quaint sort of husband whom their beloved Vanadis had fetched up from the Hall of the Chosen. But her sisters took no part in this ceremony, upon the ground that they considered such public preliminaries to be unheard-of and brazen.

Thus was Donander made free of Ydalir, the land that is above Lærath and all the other heavens and paradises: and after Donander’s seven hundred years of celibacy, he and his bride got on together in her bright palace lovingly enough. Vanadis found that she too, comparatively speaking, had lived with her five earlier husbands in celibacy.

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_62._
_The Demiurgy of Donander Veratyr_

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NOW the one change that Donander made an explicit point of was to fit out in this palace of Reginlief a chapel. There he worshiped daily at the correct hours, so near as one could calculate them in an endless day, and there he prayed for the second coming of Manuel and for the welfare of Donander’s soul upon the holy Morrow of Judgment.

“But, really, my heart,” his Vanadis would say, ineffectually, “you have been dead for so long now! And, just looking at it sensibly, it does seem such a waste of eternity!”

“Have done, my darling, with your heathen nonsense!” Donander would reply. “Do I not know that in heaven there is no marrying or giving in marriage? How then can heaven be this place in which two live so friendlily and happily?”

Meanwhile, to the pagan priests wherever the Ænseis were adored, had been revealed the sixth and the wholly successful marriage of blue-robed Vanadis: her spouse had been duly deified: and new temples had been builded in honor of the bright lady of Reginlief and of the Man-God, Donander Veratyr, her tireless savior from vain desire and bodily affliction. And time went stealthily as a stream flowing about and over the worlds, and changing them, and wearing all away. But to Donander it was as if he yet lived in the thrice-lucky afternoon on which he married his Vanadis. For, since whatever any of the Ænseis desires must happen instantly, thus Ydalir knows but one endless day; and immeasurably beneath its radiance, very much as sullen and rain-swollen waters go under a bridge upon which young lovers have met in the sunlight of April, so passed wholly unnoted by any in Ydalir the flowing and all the jumbled wreckage of time.

But it befell, too, after a great many of those æons which Ydalir ignores and men cannot imagine, that Donander saw one of his smaller brothers-in-law about a droll looking sport. Donander asked questions: and he learned this dark brisk little Koshchei was about a game at which the younger Ænseis were used to play.

“And how does one set about it?” Donander asked then.

“Why, thus and thus, my heart,” his wife replied. Fond Vanadis was glad enough to find for him some outdoor diversion which would woo him from that stuffy chapel and its depressing pictures of tortured persons and its unwholesome fogs of stifling incense.

Then Donander broke away a bough from the tree called Lærath, saying meanwhile the proper word of power. Sitting beside the fifth river of Ydalir, he cut strips of bark from this bough, with the green-handled knife which Vanadis had given him, and he cast these strips about at random. He found it perfectly true that those scraps of barks which touched the water became fish, those which he flung into the air became birds, and those which fell upon the ground became animals and men.

He almost instantly, indeed, had enough creatures to populate a world, but no world, of course, for them to animate and diversify. So Donander destroyed these creatures, and placed one of the lighter weirds upon the beetle Karu. That huge good-tempered insect fell at once to shaping a ball of mud, and to carving it with mountains and plains and valleys. Then Karu burrowed his way into the center of this ball of mud: and from the hole into which Karu had entered came all kinds of living beings needful for the animating and diversifying of a world; and these began to breed and to kill one another and to build their appropriate lairs, in nests and dens and cities.

This so excited another beetle, named Khypera, that he behaved in a fashion not at all convenient to record; but many living creatures were at once brought forth by his remarkable conduct, and plants and creeping things and men and women, too, came out of the tears which Khypera let fall.

That was the second demiurgy of Donander Veratyr. Then with a golden egg Donander made another world: and from the entrails of a spider he drew another; from the carrion of a dead cow he made a fifth world; and with the aid of a raven Donander made yet one more. Thereafter he went on, in turn attempting each method that any Ans had ever practiced.

These sports amused Donander for a long while and yet another while. And Vanadis, apart from her natural pleasure in the augmented vigor he got from so much open-air exercise, bright Vanadis smiled at his playing, in the way of any wife who finds her husband occupied upon the whole less reprehensibly than you would expect of the creature. And the sons of Sidvrar also were used, as yet, to smile not unfriendlily when they passed where Donander was busy with his toys. Even the sisters of Vanadis only said that really of all things, and that of course they had expected it from the very first. Thus everybody was content for a long while and yet another while.

And throughout both these whiles Donander was pottering with his worlds, keeping them bright with thunderbolts and volcanic eruptions, diligently cleansing them of parasites with one or another pestilence, scouring them with whirlwinds, and perpetually washing them with cloud-bursts and deluges. His toys had constantly such loving care to keep them in perfect condition. Meanwhile, his skill increased abreast with his indulgence in demiurgy, and Donander thought of little else. He needed now no aid from ravens and beetles. He had but, he found, to desire a world, and at once his desire took form: its light was divided from its darkness, the waters gathered into one place, the dry land appeared and pullulated with living creatures, all in one dexterous complacent moment of self-admiration.

His earlier made stars and comets and suns and asteroids Donander Veratyr began destroying one by one, half vexedly, half in real amusement at the archaic, bungling methods he had outgrown. In their places he would set spinning, and glittering, and popping, quite other planetary systems which, for the moment in any event, appeared to him remarkably adroit craftsmanship. And everywhere upon the worlds which he had made, and had not yet annihilated, men worshiped Donander Veratyr: and in his pleasant home at Reginlief, high over Lærath and every other heaven and paradise, Donander worshiped the god of the fathers and of all the reputable neighbors of Donander of Évre; and in such pagan surroundings as Heaven out of Heaven’s wisdom had selected for him, awaited the second coming of Manuel and the holy Morrow of Judgment.

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_63._
_Economics of Sidvrar_

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THEN of a sudden gleaming Sidvrar Vafudir, the Weaver and Constrainer, came with his wolves frisking about him. He came with his broad-brimmed hat pulled down about his eyes decisively. He came thus to his daughter, blue-robed Vanadis, and he stated that, while patience was a virtue, there was such a thing as overdoing it, no matter how little he himself might care for the talking of idle busybodies, because, however long she might argue, and always had done from childhood, being in this and in many other undesirable respects precisely like her mother, even so, no sensible Ans could ever deny her husband’s conduct was ridiculous: and that, said Sidvrar Vafudir, was all there was to it.

“Do not bluster so, my heart,” replied Vanadis, “about the facts of nature. All husbands are ridiculous. Who should be surer of this than I, who have had six husbands, unless it be you, who as goat and titmouse and birch tree have been the husband of six hundred?”

“That is all very well,” said Sidvrar, “in addition to not being what we were discussing. This Donander of yours is now one of the Ænseis, he is an Ans of mature standing, and it is not right for him to be making worlds. That is what we were discussing.”

“Yet what divine hands anywhere,” asked Vanadis, “are clean of demiurgy?”

“That is not what we were discussing, either. When you brats of mine were children you had your toys, and you played with and you smashed your toys. Nobody denies that, because you all did, from Rönn to Aduna, and even little Koshchei used to be having his fling at such nonsense. Now do you look at the very fine and sober fellow he is, with all his pranks behind him, and do you ask Koshchei what he thinks of that husband of yours! But instead, you prefer to wander away from what we were discussing, because you know as well as I do that for children to be playing at such games is natural enough, besides keeping the young out of grave mischief, now and then. Though, to be sure, nothing does that very long nor very often, as I tell you plainly, my Vanadis, for do you look, too, as a most grievous example, at the wasteful and untidy way you destroy your husbands!”

“Donander Veratyr I shall not ever destroy,” replied Vanadis, smiling, “because of the loving human heart and the maddening human ways he has brought out of his Poictesme, and for two other reasons.”

“Then it is I who will put an end, if not to him, at least to his nonsense. For this Donander of yours is still playing with stars and planets, and setting off his comets, and exploding his suns, and that is not becoming.”

“Well, well, do you, who are the Father and Master of All, have your own will with him, so far as you can get it,” Vanadis returned, still with that rather reminiscent smile. She had now lived for a great while with this sixth husband of hers, who had a human heart in him and human ways.

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_64._
_Through the Oval Window_

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SIDVRAR went then from Vanadis to Donander. But the Constrainer found there was no instant manner of constraining Donander Veratyr into a conviction that Donander of Évre had died long ago, and had become an Ans. People, Donander stated, did not do such things; when people died they went either to heaven or to hell: and further reasoning with Donander seemed to accomplish no good whatever. For Donander, as a loyal son of the Church, now shrugged pityingly at the heathen nonsense talked by his father-in-law. He stroked the heads of Sidvrar’s attendant wolves, he listened to the Weaver and Constrainer with an indulgence more properly reserved for the feeble-minded; and he said, a little relishingly, that Messire Sidvrar would be wiser on the holy Morrow of Judgment.

Then Sidvrar Vafudir became Sidvrar Yggr, the Meditating and Terrible. Then Sidvrar fell about such magicking as he had not needed to use since he first entered into the eternal yew-vales of Ydalir. Then, in a word, Sidvrar unclosed the oval window in Reginlief that opened upon space and time and upon the frozen cinders which once had been worlds and suns and stars, and which their various creators had annihilated, as one by one the Ænseis had put away their childhood and its playing.

Among such wreckage sped pretentiously the yet living worlds which Donander had made. These toys, when seen thus closely through the magic of the oval window, were abristle with the spires of the temples and the cathedrals in which they that lived, as yet, upon these worlds were used to worship. In all these churches men invoked Donander Veratyr. Through that charmed window now, for the first time, came to his ears the outcry of his clergy and laity: nowhere was there talk of another god, not even where from many worlds arose the lecturing of those who explained away their ancestors’ quaint notions about Donander the Man-God, the Savior from Vain Desire, the Preserver from Bodily Affliction, and proved there could not be any such person. And to Donander, looking out of the window at Reginlief, all these things showed as a swarming of ants or as a writhing of very small maggots about the worlds which he had made to divert him: and in the face as in the heart of Donander awoke inquietation.

“If this be a true showing,” Donander said, by and by, “show now that Earth which is my home.”

After a while of searching, Sidvrar found for him the drifting clinker which had once been Earth. Upon its glistering nakedness was left no living plant nor any breathing creature, for the Morrow of Judgment was long past, and Earth’s affairs had been wound up. Upon no planet did any one remember the god whom Donander worshiped, now that Jahveh had ended playing, and his toys were broken or put away. Upon many planets were the temples of Donander Veratyr, and the rising smoke of his sacrifice, and the cries of his worshipers as they murdered one another in their disputing over points of theology which Donander could not clearly understand.

Nor did he think about these things. Instead, Donander Veratyr, who was the last of the Ænseis to play at this unprofitable sport of demiurgy, was now remembering the days and the moon-lighted nights of his youth, and the dear trivial persons whom he had then loved and revered. He did not think about the two wives whom he had married upon Earth, nor about his son Maugis, nor about any of the happenings of Donander’s manhood. He thought of, for no reason at all, the shabby little village priest who had confirmed him, and of the father and mother who had been all-wise and able to defend one from every evil, and of the tall girl whose lips had, once, and before any other lips, been sweeter than were the joys of Ydalir. And he thought of many other futile things, all now attested always to have been futile, which long ago had seemed so very important to the boy that, in serving famous Manuel of Poictesme, had postured so high-heartedly in one of the smallest provinces of an extinct planet.

And Donander wrung immortal hands, saying, “If this be a true showing, what thing have I become, who can no longer love or reverence anything! who can have no care for any Morrow of Judgment! and to whom space reveals only the living of these indistinguishable and unclean and demented insects!”

The cry of his worshipers came up to him. “Thou art God, the Creator and Preserver of all us Thy children! Thou art Donander Veratyr, in Whom is our firm hope! Thou art the Man-God, That wilt grant unto us justice and salvation upon the holy Morrow of Judgment!”

“Is it,” Donander said, “of Manuel that these little creatures speak?”

“We know not of any Manuel,” the universe replied to him. “We only know that Thou art God, our Creator and Preserver.”

Then, after viewing again the vermin which swarmed about his worlds, Donander said, like one a little frightened, “Is God thus?”

They answered him, fondly and reverently, “How can God be otherwise than Thou art?”

At that Donander shuddered. But in the same moment he said, “If this be a true showing, and if I be indeed a god, and the master of all things, the human heart which survives in me wills now to create that to-morrow for which these weaklings and I too have so long waited.”

Then Sidvrar pointed out, as patiently as outraged common-sense permitted: “Still, still, you are talking nonsense! How can an Ans create to-morrow?”

Donander asked, in turn, “Why not, if you be omnipotent?”

“It is because we are omnipotent. Thus in Ydalir there is but one day, from which not even in imagination can any Ans escape. For, whatever any of the Ænseis desires, even if it be a to-morrow, must instantly happen and exist; and so must be to-day. That ought to be plain enough.”

“It is not plain,” Donander answered, “although, the way you put it, I admit, it does sound logical. Therefore, if this indeed be the way of omnipotence, and if none may escape his day, and if I be a trapped and meager immortal, and the master only of those things which are to-day, then now let all things end! For my heart stays human. To-day does not know the runes of my heart’s contentment. My heart will not be satisfied unless it enter into that morrow of justice and salvation which the overlords of men, as you now tell me, cannot desire nor plan. So now, if this be a true showing, now let all things end!”

Within the moment Donander saw that, while he was yet speaking, space was emptied of life. Down yonder now were no more men and women anywhere. None any longer awaited an oncoming day which was to content one utterly with an assured bright heritage, divined in the dreams which allured and derided all human living endlessly, and condemned the heart of every man to be a stranger to contentment upon this side of to-morrow. That ageless dream about to-morrow, and about the redeeming which was to come—to-morrow—had passed, as the smoke of a little incense passes; and with it had gone out of being, too, those whom it had nourished and sustained. There were no more men or women anywhere. Donander could see only many cinders adrift in a bleak loneliness: and Donander of Évre must endure eternally as Donander Veratyr, a lonely and uncomprehended immortal, among his many peers.

“So do you be sensible about it, my son-in-law,” said Sidvrar Vafudir, when he had spoken the word of power which closed forever that cheerless window, out of which nobody was ever to look any more,—“be sensible if there indeed stay any root of intelligence in you. And do you henceforward live more fittingly, as a credit to your wife’s family. And do you put out of mind those cinders and those ashes and those clinkers that were the proper sport of your youth. Such is the end of every wise person’s saga.”

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_65._
_The Reward of Faith_

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THEREAFTER the King and Father of the Ænseis departed, well pleased with the lesson taught that whippersnapper. And Donander also smiled, and he looked contentedly about his pleasant quarters in the everlasting vales of Ydalir.

“Still, not for a great deal,” Donander reflected, “would I be treading in that old sorcerer’s sandals; and it is a fair shame that I should have such a person for a father-in-law.”

For, as a loyal son of the Church, Donander did not doubt that the wonders which Sidvrar had just shown to him could only be an illusion planned with some evil spirit’s aid to tempt Donander away from respectability and the true faith. In consequence Donander Veratyr, that had been the Creator and Destroyer of all things except the human heart which survived in him, went now into the chapel of Reginlief. There he decorously said the prayers to which Donander was accustomed, and he prayed for the second coming of Manuel and for the welfare of Donander’s soul upon the holy Morrow of Judgment.

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