Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

by James Branch Cabell

Said the hooded man: "So be it! but as you are, so once was I."

Meanwhile Duke Jurgen held the lance erect, shaking it with his right hand. This lance was large, and the tip of it was red with blood.

"Behold," said Jurgen, "I am a man born of a woman incomprehensibly. Now I, who am miraculous, am found worthy to perform a miracle, and to create that which I may not comprehend."

Anaïtis took salt and water from the child, and mingled these. "Let the salt of earth enable the thin fluid to assume the virtue of the teeming sea!"

Then, kneeling, she touched the lance, and began to stroke it lovingly. To Jurgen she said: "Now may you be fervent of soul and body! May the endless Serpent be your crown, and the fertile flame of the sun your strength!"

Said the hooded man, again: "So be it!" His voice was high and bleating, because of that which had been done to him.

"That therefore which we cannot understand we also invoke," said Jurgen. "By the power of the lifted lance"—and now with his left hand he took the hand of Anaïtis,—"I, being a man born of a woman incomprehensibly, now seize upon that which alone I desire with my whole being. I lead you toward the east. I upraise you above the earth and all the things of earth."

Then Jurgen raised Queen Anaïtis so that she sat upon the altar, and that which was there before tumbled to the ground. Anaïtis placed together the tips of her thumbs and of her fingers, so that her hands made an open triangle; and waited thus. Upon her head was a network of red coral, with branches radiating downward: her gauzy tunic had twenty-two openings, so as to admit all imaginable caresses, and was of two colors, being shot with black and crimson curiously mingled: her dark eyes glittered and her breath came fast.

Now the hooded man and the two naked girls performed their share in the ceremonial, which part it is not essential to record. But Jurgen was rather shocked by it.

None the less, Jurgen said: "O cord that binds the circling of the stars! O cup which holds all time, all color, and all thought! O soul of space! not unto any image of thee do we attain unless thy image show in what we are about to do. Therefore by every plant which scatters its seed and by the moist warm garden which receives and nourishes it, by the comminglement of bloodshed with pleasure, by the joy that mimics anguish with sighs and shudderings, and by the contentment which mimics death,—by all these do we invoke thee. O thou, continuous one, whose will these children attend, and whom I now adore in this fair-colored and soft woman's body, it is thou whom I honor, not any woman, in doing what seems good to me: and it is thou who art about to speak, and not she."