But Morvyth smiled as, with that habitual gesture, she tidied her hair: and she sent for her seven heroic lovers, and spoke to them, as she phrased it, frankly.

39

 7.Fatality the Second

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THUS all was to do again. The champions pulled rather long faces, and the lower orders were disappointed in missing the gratis entertainments attendant on a royal marriage. But the clergy and the well-thought-of laity and the leading tax-payers applauded the decision of Queen Morvyth as a most glorious example in such feverish and pleasure-loving days of soulless materialism.

So again the eight lovers of Morvyth met in the cathedral, to have their swords appropriately consecrated by the Imaun of Bulotu. And that beneficent and justly popular old prelate, after he had cut the throats of the three selected children, began the real ceremony with a prayer to Pygé-Upsízugos, as to Him whose transformations are hidden in all temples patronized by the best-thought-of people, and saying, as was customary and polite:

“The height of the firmament is subservient unto thee, O Pygé-Upsízugos! thy throne is very high! the ornaments upon the seat of thy blue trousers are the bright stars which never diminish! Every man makes 40offering unto that portion of thee which is revealed, and thou art the Sedentary Master commemorated in heaven and upon earth. Thou art a shining noble seated above all nobles, permanent in thy high station, established in thy stern sovereignty, and the callipygous Prince of the Company of Gods.”

40

Nobody quite believed this, of course, but in Inis Dahut, as in all other places, the Fundamentalists took a proper pride in their tribal deity, and, whenever they could spare time for religious matters, made as much of him as possible. So they now tendered to Pygé-Upsízugos a fine offering of quails and cinnamon and bullocks’ hearts, and they raised the Hymn of the Star Spangled Buttock in the while that the two ewers containing the blood of the children were placed upon his altar.

Thus everything at first went nicely enough. But when the company of Morvyth’s lovers, with all their swords drawn, had approached the altar, for the consecrating, and in the while that they ascended the smooth porphyry steps, then limping Gonfal stumbled or else he slipped. He thus dropped his sword. The tall 

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