“Because, because the poor devils were fooled once before. And their new Messiah may deceive them as bitterly with unwise meddling as Cortez did with greed and cruelty.”
“Messiah for these pigs!” Éloin sneered. “What pleasure it gives him, I can’t see.”
122CHAPTER XV
The Ritual
“... a bearded man,
Pamper’d with rank luxuriousness and ease.”
–Dante.
The Emperor was coming–elaborately, by august degrees.
First, and far in advance, arrived a haughty pack liveried in the royal green of ancient Aztec dynasties. New tenants might have been moving on this bright May day, for the flunkies attended a small caravan of household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts into a goose’s maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty’s absolute necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and portiéres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then–there was the Ritual.
The Ritual was a massive tome, of glazed, gilt-edged paper, of print as big for the proclaiming of truth as the Family Bible, of weight to burden a strong man, of contents to stagger a giant brain, unless the giant brain had in it the convolution of a smile. Maximilian and Charlotte had reigned a year, and so far the Ritual was the supreme monument to the glory and usefulness of their Empire. It decreed, by Imperial dictation and signature, the etiquette that must and should be observed in the courtly circle. But alas, you can’t codify genuflections, nor yet a handshake.
123The next degree in the imperial advent was the imperial courier, who proclaimed from a curveting steed what everybody suspected. “Our August Sovereign” was approaching.