xv

BOOK ONE

LAST SIEGE OF THE FELLOWSHIP

Zechariah

xvi—Et la route, fait elle aussi un grand tour?

xvi

—Oh, bien certainement, étant donné qu’elle circonvient à la fois la destinée et le bon sens.

—Puisqu’il le faut, alors! dit Jurgen; d’ailleurs je suis toujours disposé à goûter n’importe quel breuvage au moins une fois.

—La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen.

La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen.

3

 1.Child’s Talk

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THEY relate how Dom Manuel that was the high Count of Poictesme, and was everywhere esteemed the most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue of his times, had disappeared out of his castle at Storisende, without any reason or forewarning, upon the feast day of St. Michael and All the Angels. They tell of the confusion and dismay which arose in Dom Manuel’s lands when it was known that Manuel the Redeemer—thus named because he had redeemed Poictesme from the Northmen, through the aid of Miramon Lluagor, with a great and sanguinary magic,—was now gone, quite inexplicably, out of these lands.

For whither Manuel had gone, no man nor any woman could say with certainty. At Storisende he had last been seen by his small daughter Melicent, who stated that Father, mounted on a black horse, had ridden westward with Grandfather Death, on a white one, to a far place beyond the sunset. This was quite generally felt to be improbable.

Yet further inquiry had but made more deep the mystery as to the manner of Dom Manuel’s passing. 4Further 

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