Illustrations
| Florian felt himself to be in not quite the company suited to a nobleman of his rank | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| She waited—there was the miracle—for Florian de Puysange | [44] |
| He did not move, but lay quite still, staring upward | [82] |
| Florian’s plump face was transfigured, as he knelt before his Melior | [120] |
| Now Florian came forward | [162] |
| Presently the Collyn of Puysange had opened her yellow eyes and was licking daintily her lips | [198] |
| He closed upon Florian, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working | [250] |
| “—And this is the last cloud going west” | [286] |
PART ONE
THE END OF LONG WANTING
“Lever un tel obstacle est à moy peu de chose.
Le Ciel défend, de vray, certains contentemens;
Mais on trouve avec luy des accommodemens.”
1.
The Child Errant
ROBABLY Florian would never have gone into the Forest of Acaire had he not been told, over and over again, to keep out of it. Obedience to those divinely set in authority was in 1698 still modish: none the less, such orders, so insistently repeated to any normal boy of ten, even to a boy not born of the restless house of Puysange, must make the venture at one time or another obligatory.
Moreover, this October afternoon was of the sun-steeped lazy sort which shows the world as over-satisfied with the done year’s achievements, of the sort which, when you think about it so long, arouses a dim dissent from such unambitious aims. It was not that the young Prince de Lisuarte—to give Florian his proper title,—was in any one point dissatisfied with the familiar Poictesme immediately about him: he liked it well enough. It was only that he preferred another place, which probably existed somewhere, and which was not familiar or even known to him. It was only that you might—here one approximates to Florian’s vague thinking, as he lay yawning under the little tree from the East,—that you might find more excitement in some place which strove toward larger upshots than the ripening of grains and fruits, in a world which did not every autumn go to sleep as if the providing of food-stuffs and the fodder for people’s cattle were enough.
To-day, with October’s temperate sunlight everywhere, the sleek country of Poictesme was inexpressibly asleep, wrapped in a mellowing haze. The thronged trees of Acaire, as Florian now saw them just beyond that low red wall, seemed to have golden powder scattered over them, a powder which they stayed too motionless to shake off. Yet logic told him these still trees most certainly veiled wild excitements of some sort, for otherwise people would not be at you, over and over again, with exhortations to keep out of that forest.