Figures of Earth quotes

They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly in attendance upon the miller’s pigs.

They tell also that Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him.

“I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one’s youth in the sun.

A man has but one life. It is his all.

Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas.

“

Why, of what may I be sure in this shifting world if not of myself?

”

“

Our elders, Niafer, have long had the management of this world’s affairs, and you can see for yourself what they have made of these affairs.

What sort of a world is it, I ask you, in which time peculates the gold from hair and the crimson from all lips, and the north wind carries away the glow and glory and contentment of October, and a driveling old magician steals a …

“

Love, as I think, is an instant’s fusing of shadow and substance.

They that aspire to possess love utterly, fall into folly. This is forbidden: you cannot. The lover, beholding that fusing move as a golden-hued goddess, accessible, kindly and priceless, wooes and ill-fatedly wins all the substance.

“

All persons voice some regret or another at meeting me. And it does not ever matter.

”

“

My wish would be for me always to obtain whatever I may wish for.

Yes, Horvendile, I have often wondered why, in the old legends, when three wishes were being offered, nobody ever made that sensible and economical wish the first of all.”

Manuel replied, “I think that it is not right to rob anybody of anything, and

I reflect that wisdom weighs exactly the weight of a feather.

”

Manuel induced Alianora to summon the Zhar-Ptitza, who is the oldest and the most learned of all living creatures, although he has thus far learned nothing assuredly except that appearances have to be kept up. The Zhar-Ptitza came, crying wearily, “

Fine feathers make fine birds.

” You heard him from afar.

Manuel gave her that slow sleepy smile which was Manuel. “Just,” he said—“and it is that which humiliates.

Yes, you and I are second-rate persons, Alianora, and we have found each other out.

It is a pity. But we will always keep our secret from the rest of the world, and our secret will always be a bond between us.”

and the firelight was in the snake’s contemptuous wise eyes. Manuel was of stalwart person, but his strength availed him nothing until he began to recite aloud, as Helmas had directed, the multiplication tables:

Freydis could not withstand mathematics.

So when Manuel had come to two times eleven the tall fire guttered as though it bended under the passing of a strong wind: then the flames burned high, and Manuel could see that he was grasping the throat of a monstrous pig.

“—And for defying me you will suffer very terribly—”

“Yes,” replied Freydis. “And much you will care!” she said, reproachfully.

“—Therefore I think that you are acting foolishly.”

In his firelit eyes she saw love out of measure and without hope. And in the breast of Freydis moved the heart of a human woman.

“I cannot help it,” she said, as the hour passed. “Somebody has to bandage it, and men have no sense in these matters.”

Whereon the fire roared angrily, and leaped, and fell dead, for the Moon-Children Bil and Hjuki had returned from the well which is called Byrgir, and the moon was no longer void and powerless.

“Now certainly there is in Audela no such moonstruck nonsense to be hearing, nor any such quick-footed hour of foolishness to be living through,” Freydis replied, “as here tonight has robbed me of my kingdom.”

“Love will repay,” said Manuel, as is the easy fashion of men.

And Freydis, a human woman now in all things, laughed low and softly in the darkness. “Repay me thus, my dearest:

“Why, Manuel, I am surprised at you!

In what else, pray, does man differ from the other animals except in that he is used by words?

”

So do we pass, each coming out of a strange woman’s womb, each parodied by the flesh of his parents, each passing futilely, with incommunicative gestures, toward the womb of a strange grave: and in this jostling we find no comradeship.

No soul may travel upon a bridge of words.

Indeed there is no word for my foiled huge desire to love and to be loved, just as there is no word for the big, the not quite comprehended thought which is moving in me at this moment. But that thought also is a grief—”

“Now there is garnered such might and loveliness and wisdom as human thinking cannot conceive of. An emperor is made much of here when he has conquered some part of the world, but

Death makes nothing of a world of emperors

:

“I love you,” said the lovers.

“You have been telling me that for twelve centuries,” replied the ladies, yawning, “and too much of anything is enough.”

“Upon my body, I think so too,” declared the lovers. “I said it only out of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I am as tired of this lackadaisical idiocy as you are.”

and life will burgeon with white miracles, and every blossom you will take to be eternal.

Laughing, you will say of sorrow, ‘What is it?’ And I, whom some call Béda, and others call Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by this.

“Then your seeing will have my help, and you will observe that Manuel is very much like other persons. He will be used to having you about, and you him, and that will be the sorry bond between you.

nor how at Lisuarte unarmored peasants beat off Manuel’s followers with scythes and pitchforks and clubs.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the color is washed from flimsy cloths;

so that chroniclers act wisely when they wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Antipope there, and grudge the paper needful to record the remarkable method by which gaunt Tohil …

In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burning god, but time affects more subtle hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright. Yes,

Moloch, being divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but time is that transfigured cat, an ironist.

So living mars and defaces and maims, and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its prey before destroying it.

“

I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and I leave them to endure that which is fated.

Daily I bring into this world the beauty and innocence and high-heartedness and faith of children:

But I often wonder, as I am sure all husbands wonder, why Heaven ever made a creature so tedious and so unreasonably dull of wit and so opinionated.

And when I think that for the rest of time this creature is to be my companion I usually go out and kill somebody. Then I come back, because she knows the way I like my toast.

”

“Instead, dear Manuel, you must go away from this woman who does not understand you—”

“Yes,” Manuel said, with grave conviction, “that is exactly the trouble.”

“—And you must go with me who understand you all through. And we will travel everywhither, so that we may see the ends of this world and judge them.”

But women are so queerly fashioned that at the last I cannot, quite, consent to harm this gray, staid, tedious fellow, nor any of his chattels.

For all passes in this world save one thing only: and though the young Manuel whom I loved in a summer that is gone, be nowadays as perished as that summer’s gay leaves, it is certain a woman’s folly does not ever perish.

”

“You do not!” said Miramon.

“You only talk and fidget, because you are upset by the appearance of your allies; and such talking and fidgeting is very disturbing to an artist who is striving to reanimate the past.”

Thus speaking, Miramon turned indignantly to another evocation. It summoned a champion in a luminous chariot drawn by scarlet mares. He was golden-haired, with ruddy limbs, and was armed with a bow and arrows:

“Why, I was thinking I must remember to look over your flannels the first thing tomorrow, Manuel, for everybody knows what that damp English climate is in autumn—”

“My dearest,” Manuel said, with grave conviction, “you are the archetype and flawless model of all wives.”

“—Then, even more important than these considerations—.”

“Nothing is more important, Manuel, in this very curious sounding affair, than the way that woman looks nowadays.”

“Ah, my dear,” says Manuel, diplomatically, “I did not like to speak of that, I confess, for you know these blondes go off in their appearance so quickly—”

A year or two earlier Dame Niafer would perhaps have been moved to jealousy: now her only concern was that Manuel might possibly be led to make a fool of himself and to upset their manner of living.

With every contented wife her husband’s general foolishness is an axiom, and prudent philosophers do not distinguish here between cause and effect.

As for Alianora’s wanting to take Manuel as a lover, Dame Niafer found the idea mildly amusing, and very nicely indicative of those washed-out, yellow-haired women’s intelligence.

Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, “I am Lubrican, and I come to guide you if you dare follow.”

“I have always thought that ‘dare’ was a quaint word,” says Manuel, with the lordly swagger which he kept for company.

So he climbed out of the third window of Ageus. When later he climbed back, a lock had been sheared from the side of his gray head.

Manuel laughed without merriment.

“Everything is in a conspiracy to satisfy me in these sleek times, and it is that which chiefly plagues me.”

He chucked Niafer under the chin, and told her she should be thinking of what a famous husband she had nowadays, instead of bothering about pastrycooks.

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 succumb 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 so farewell to you, Queen Suskind,” says Count Manuel. “You who were not human, but knew only the truth of things, could never understand our foolish human notions. Otherwise you would never have demanded the one price I may not pay.”

“Weep, weep for Suskind!” then said Lubrican, wailing feebly in the gray and April-scented dusk

; “for it was she alone who knew the secret of preserving that dissatisfaction which is divine where all else falls away with age into the acquiescence of beasts.”

and the desire to do so no longer moves in me, for there is a cloud about my goings, and there is a whispering which follows me, and I too fall away into the acquiescence of beasts.

Meanwhile no hair of the child’s head has been injured, and I am content.

”