Three days later I was informed of the passing of Anzoni, Arch-priest of Meleager, and of the election of Marzona as his successor. For the former part of this intelligence I was, of course, fully prepared, but the latter intimation aroused my worst apprehensions and depressed my spirits to their lowest depth. For I understood only too well the hard, intractable, suspicious nature of the councillor who had just been chosen—by what means or on what system I knew not—to fill the vacant office of my dear old friend. All I could do was to conceal with equal adroitness both my sorrow for the first calamity and my anxiety over the second, and to pursue my normal course of life with all the composure at my disposal. Nevertheless, my first formal interview with the new potentate only served to strengthen every foreboding on my part. Marzona always treated me, I admit, with a courteous demeanour whether in public or private; but I was only too conscious on every occasion of our meeting that I was in the presence of a crafty, unrelenting foe, whom it would be useless to attempt to placate. As for Marzona's prior career, I had gathered some time ago that he was by birth a plebeian "intellectual," who had risen by his talents (in the manner already described by me in my former letter) to the order of the nobility, and from the ranks of the nobles had contrived to pass through the school of the neophytes and the college of the probationers, and thence into the coveted oligarchy beyond. For private reasons he had always aimed at the office of Arch-priest, sedulously declining, with this particular objective in view, to undertake the voyage to the Earth, with the result that now at last he had attained to that eminence on which for years he had concentrated his hopes, his desires and all his immense capacity of intrigue. In appearance Marzona was not unprepossessing, and his face, which showed of a somewhat lighter tint than is usual in Meleager, would have been accounted handsome, were it not for the dull hazel eyes, which, however, constantly emitted from their recesses a ruddy gleam, reminding me of the hidden tongue of flame that lurks in the so-called black opals of Queensland. To a nature so sensitive as mine, the very approach of this personage caused an involuntary tremor of repulsion, and in my heart I always quailed when those expressionless, opalescent orbs were directed at me.
In estimating our misfortunes and brooding over them, we are unwittingly given to exaggerate, so forcibly works within us the irrepressible spirit of egoism. We oftentimes hold ourselves to be the absolute sport of some malign fury, whereas, did we but know it, we have in reality but commenced to drink of that bitter cup which we imagine we have almost drained to the dregs. So it was in my own case of despondency. I could not figure to myself a worse disaster than what had just befallen me in the double blow caused by my old protector's death and the election of his odious supplanter; and accordingly I set to lament my grievances as though they were incapable of further extension. My mental blindness on this point was however swiftly and suddenly illumined by means of a recurring stroke of evil that was dealt me within three weeks of the election of the new Arch-priest. On awaking one morning I missed Hiridia's customary entrance into my chamber, an omission of duty that had never occurred previously except with my consent and knowledge. The day passed slowly without any sign of my chamberlain, so that I grew angered, puzzled and finally alarmed. Still, some inner shrinking urged me to restrain my natural annoyance and curiosity as to this mysterious lapse, and it was not till nightfall that I summoned Zulàr, my senior equerry, and questioned him with such nonchalance as I could assume concerning the cause of Hiridia's abstention. Zulàr, who seemed terribly nervous, at first sought to evade my inquiries; but on my growing stern and insistent, he admitted to me what I realised at once to be the truth, or at least a portion of the truth; Hiridia had entered the school of neophytes the preceding night, having lately developed a vocation for the hierarchy, for which his age now rendered him eligible. So far, this was strictly accurate, for I knew that the graceful stripling of some seven years ago had quite recently attained the prescribed age, being indeed a youth no longer; also I was convinced he really was interned within the walls of the seminary. On the other hand, it was inconceivable that Hiridia should have deserted his master in so abrupt and so insolent a fashion, even supposing he had honestly wished to graduate for the hierarchy, of which intention on his part I had never observed the least indication. His loyalty and devotion to myself and my interests were beyond question, and I had the anguish to realise that my poor favourite had been treacherously kidnapped and was now a veritable prisoner within the walls of that hierarchical castle.
Fortunately indignation rather than grief was the predominating emotion of the moment, so that I at once dispatched the affrighted Zulàr to bear a message from me to the Arch-priest, bidding him attend with all speed at the palace. For hours I waited in wakeful fury the arrival of Marzona, who on some pretext contrived to delay his coming until the following morning was well advanced. Perhaps this slighting of my command was not wholly without benefit to myself, for by the time of his belated appearance my mood had grown calmer and I was disposed to regard the situation with some degree of diplomatic restraint. Without, therefore, directly assuming his influence in the matter, I bade Marzona explain to me this sudden resolve on Hiridia's part, whereby I had been unexpectedly deprived of an official whose services I valued so highly. I also laid stress on the erratic and disrespectful manner of his withdrawal from my Court. Coldly and steadily those dull, jade-coloured eyes scanned my face, as I expatiated on my wrongs, so that I could easily gather there was no help forthcoming from this quarter whence doubtless had emanated this cunning stroke of malevolence. When I had made an end, the Arch-priest began in suave tones of pseudo-sympathy to express his regret for my loss, whose extent he did not seek to minimise. At the same time, so he explained to me, the laws of Meleager with regard to postulants for the hierarchy were fundamental in their scope, and consequently utterly beyond the control or interference of the Arch-priest. Hiridia had exceeded his thirtieth year, and was therefore free to choose and inaugurate such a career at any moment; at the same time he agreed with me in thinking that Hiridia's conduct in so quitting my service snowed a lamentable lack of gratitude and consideration to a most indulgent patron. And he again offered me his condolences for my loss and resulting inconvenience.
No Medicean Secretary of State could have exhibited greater reserve and finesse in argument and deportment than did the new Arch-priest of Meleager in this interview with myself. Had it not all been so tragical and alarming, I could almost have been won to admiration of the easy duplicity of Marzona, who parried my questions and pretended to soothe my complaints of ill-treatment, the while wholly indifferent to the patent fact that I was clearly reading his black hostile heart. The moral prototype of this man must have flourished centuries ago at the venal courts of Rome and Ferrara; had the state craft of the petty Italian despots of the Renaissance been transplanted into the fertile soil of Meleagrian hearts, here in the twentieth century of our Herthian Christian era? Disgusted and wearied at last from this verbal fencing with an invulnerable antagonist, I nodded my head in token that the interview was at an end and the incident closed, my sole ray of consolation being that Marzona did not perhaps truly appraise the full extent of the injury he had dealt me by his recent seizure of Hiridia's person. Possibly he may have relied on my being goaded thereby into indiscreet abuse, and if such were his main object, in this design he had at least been foiled. Verily, this reflection was a sorry crumb of compensation for the blighting loss I had sustained; still, it offered some moral support in itself to think that I had successfully curbed my natural fury. At the same time I did not wholly veil my attitude of intense displeasure, for I argued it might possibly excite fresh suspicion in another guise were I to bear my late discomfiture too lightly in outward appearance. With my heart therefore secretly wrung and tortured and with my brain afire from impotent indignation, I sought to swallow my late indignities with as good a grace as I could muster.
If man is incapable of estimating the full degree of a visitation of evil, so also is he equally at fault in appreciating his present advantages, until he be suddenly deprived of them. So it fell in this matter of Hiridia's removal, whose unhappy consequences to myself only emerged gradually after the event. Until a few weeks ago I could never have believed that Hiridia's companionship had been of such vital help to me or had so sweetened my royal existence. I had been accustomed to regard my erstwhile tutor rather as a favoured page whom it amused me to confide in, to mystify, to scold, or to twit as might suit my passing whim. That I should have deeply regretted his departure I was quite ready to admit; but I never anticipated the serious nature of my loss till that loss was effected. A veritable portion of myself seemed to have been lopped away by this devilish scheme; whilst the haunting thought that the poor boy—for I made scant allowance for his thirty years now fulfilled—was almost certainly sobbing out his faithful and affectionate heart in a hateful prison, only served to fan the flame of my torment. Yet I was helpless and powerless, and could only await the approach of the solstice, when the expected bath in the Fountain of Rejuvenation might possibly brace my brain for some successful plan of action.
III
Happily this ceremony was not many weeks distant, and its approach afforded me some objective, however uncertain and inadequate, for fixing my hopes in the future. The lassitude too that usually preceded this half-yearly reinvigorating process had appeared rather earlier than its wont, so that the physical weariness and languor were already rendering my brain less active and thereby indirectly supplying me with some measure of relief from my tense anxiety. I continued to perform my daily duties in the judgment halls of the city, but otherwise I ceased to leave the palace during this time of ineffable loneliness and humiliation. To fill Hiridia's vacant place of chamberlain I nominated Zulàr, and likewise selected another equerry. With my daily routine thus proceeding outwardly much as usual, I relied on my being left in peace throughout the intervening weeks before the coming of the solstice. But herein I was grievously mistaken in supposing that the machinations of my enemies had been even temporarily suspended, as the following incident can testify.
I was in the habit, especially during the hot weather, of sitting in the palace gardens to meditate. Now, in my case, this daily custom of meditation supplied the place of reading, and with constant practice it was interesting to find how excellent a substitute for books it became in course of time. For I had gradually grown to appreciate the luxury of solitary thought to such an extent that I should have lamented the cessation of these opportunities as many an earth-born mortal would regard his deprivation of all printed matter. "He is never alone who is accompanied by noble thoughts," and inasmuch as I felt myself in the cue for tragedy, poetry, comedy or pure fantasy, so I had grown an adept in attaching my prevailing humour to the trend of my musings. Thus I passed long hours of solitary communing in a world of my own peopled with my intimate aspirations, ideals, conceits and fancies. My favourite spot for the practice of these cerebral gymnastics, if I may so describe them, was a certain shady corner of the palace gardens which terminated in a semicircular marble bench backed by a close-clipped hedge of bay and daphne. The path leading hither was likewise lined with thick walls of aromatic verdure, so that the air was often odorous with the clinging scent of aleagnis and allspice. Overhead the branches of taller trees had been artfully pleached, whilst the young leaves of the topmost boughs in opposition to the fierce beams of the invading sunlight caused a soft golden haze to brood in the sylvan vaulting of this green alley. As I lay on my marble couch I used to note the penetrating shafts of sunshine discover the knots of golden wire that bound together these over-arching limbs, exposing the artificial origin of the bower and reminding me of Leonardo da Vinci's Arbour of Love with its gilded true-lovers' knots that still flourishes in one of the vaulted chambers of the Sforzas' gloomy citadel in Milan. True, I used to miss in my leafy Meleagrian lair the mocking fauns and nymphs of Boboli and Borghese, who seemed set on their stone pedestals to watch with sly glances as to whether Christian mortals would behave with more decorum than themselves in those delicious and provocative groves, where in primitive days they were
"Wont to clasp their loves at noontide,
Close as lovers clasp at night,"
with none to call aloud Halt! or Fie! To make amends for the absence of these simulacra of the jolly pagan life of Herthus, there was a fountain hidden somewhere behind the bosky screens, which allowed its water to flow in a series of cadences and pauses and arpeggios, so that it sung a lullaby that was by no means monotonous to the surrounding thickets and to any stray inhabitant thereof.