Now FLORIAN came forward.
See page [234]
“That is easy,” said the fifth person, the only one who now remained. “You must adventure as they once adventured, who were your forefathers, and you must go with me, who am called Horvendile, into Antan.”
“Were those evaporating gentlemen my forefathers?” asked Florian. “And how does one go into Antan?”
“They were,” answered Horvendile. “And one goes in this way.” He explained the way, and the need for traveling on it.
And Florian looked rather dubious and took snuff. He saw that Janicot had vanished from the asherah stone, with that ostentatious simplicity the brown creature seemed to affect. Then Florian shrugged, and said he would go wherever Horvendile dared go, since this appeared now the only chance of coming by the sword Flamberge.
“And as for those who were my forefathers, and begot me, I would of course have said something civil to express my appreciation of their exertions, if I had known. But between ourselves, Monsieur Horvendile, I would have preferred to meet some of the more imposing progenitors of Puysange,—say, heroic old Dom Manuel or the great Jurgen,—instead of these commonplace people. It is depressing to find any of one’s own ancestors just ordinary persons, persons too who seem quite down in the mouth, and with so little life in them—”
“To be quite ordinary persons,” replied Horvendile, “is a failing woefully common to all men and to the daughters of all men, nor does that foible shock anybody who is not a romantic. As for having very little life in them, what more do you expect of phantoms? The life that was once in these persons to-day endures in you. For it is a truism—preached to I do not, unluckily, know how many generations,—that the life which informed your ancestor, tall Manuel the Redeemer, did not perish when Manuel passed beyond the sunset, but remained here upon earth to animate the bodies of his children and of their children after them.”
“But by this time Manuel must have the progeny of a sultan or of a town bull—”
“Yes,” Horvendile conceded, “in a great many bodies, and in countless estates, that life has known a largish number of fruitless emotions. At least, they appear to me to have been rather fruitless. And to-day that life wears you, Monsieur de Puysange, as its temporary garment or, it may be, as a mask: to-morrow you also will have been put by. For that is always the ending of the comedy.”