The High Place: A Comedy of Disenchantment

by James Branch Cabell

“I do not think that it was just a dream, monsieur my father—”

“But I, unluckily, am sure it was, my son. And I suspect, too, that it is the dream which comes in varying forms to us of Puysange, the dream which we do not ever quite put out of mind. We stay, to the last, romantics. So Melior, it may be, will remain to you always that unattainable beauty toward which we of Puysange must always yearn,—just as your patron St. Hoprig will always afford to you, in his glorious life and deeds, an example which you will admire and, I trust, emulate. I admit that such emulation,” the Duke added, more drily, “has not always been inescapable by us of Puysange.”

“I cannot hope to be so good as was Monseigneur St. Hoprig,” Florian replied, “but I shall endeavor to merit his approval.”

“Indeed, you should have dreamed of the blessed Hoprig also, while you were about it, Florian. For he was a close friend of your Melior’s father, you may remember, and performed many miracles at the court of King Helmas.”

“That is true,” said Florian. “Oxen brought him there in a stone trough: and I am sure that Monseigneur St. Hoprig must have loved Melior very much.”

And he did not say any more about what his father seemed bent upon regarding as Florian’s dream. At ten a boy has learned to humor the notions of his elders. Florian slipped down from the bench, and tucked his book under his arm, and agreed with his father that it was near time for supper.

None the less, though, as the boy stood waiting for that magnificent father of his to arise from the bench, Florian reflected how queer it was that, before the falling of the Nis magic, this beautiful Melior must have known and talked with Florian’s heavenly patron, St. Hoprig of Gol. It was to Holy Hoprig that Florian’s mother had commended the boy with her last breath, and it was to Holy Hoprig that Florian’s father had taught the boy to pray in all time of doubt or peccadillo, because this saint was always to be the boy’s protector and advocate. And this made heaven seem very near and real, the knowledge that always in celestial courts this bright friend was watching, and, Florian hoped, was upon occasion tactfully suggesting to the good God that one must not be too severe with growing boys. Melior—Florian thought now,—was remotely and half timidly to be worshipped: Hoprig, the friend and intercessor,—a being even more kindly and splendid than was your superb father,—you loved....

Florian had by heart all the legends about Holy Hoprig. Particularly did Florian rejoice in the tale of the saint’s birth, in such untoward circumstances as caused the baby to be placed in a barrel, and cast into the sea, to be carried whither wind and tide directed. Florian knew that for ten years the barrel floated, tossing up and down in all parts of the ocean, while regularly an angel passed the necessary food to young Hoprig through the bung-hole. Finally, at Heaven’s chosen time, the barrel rolled ashore near Manneville, on the low sands of Fomor Beach. A fisherman, thinking that he had found a cask of wine, was about to tap it with a gimlet; then from within, for the first time, St. Hoprig speaks to man: “Do not injure the cask. Go at once to the abbot of the monastery to which this land belongs, and bid him come to baptize me.”

It seemed to Florian that was a glorious start in life for a boy of ten, a boy of just the same age as Florian. All the later miracles and prodigies appeared, in comparison with that soul-contenting moment, to be compact of paler splendors. Nobody, though, could hear unenviously of the long voyage to the Red Islands and the realm of Hlif, and to Pohjola, and even to the gold-paved Strembölgings, where every woman contains a serpent so placed as to discourage love-making,—of that pre-eminently delightful voyage made by St. Hoprig and St. Hork in the stone trough, which, after its landing upon the coasts of Poictesme, at mid-winter, during a miraculous shower of apple-blossoms, white oxen drew through the country hillward, with the two saints by turns preaching and converting people all the way to Perdigon. For that, Florian remembered, was the imposing fashion in which Holy Hoprig had come to the court of Melior’s father,—and had wrought miracles there also, to the discomfiture of the abominable Horrig. But more important, now, was the reflection that St. Hoprig had in this manner come to Melior and to the unimaginable beauty which, in the high place, a coverlet of violet stuff just half concealed....

Certainly Monseigneur St. Hoprig must have loved Melior very much, and these two must have been very marvelous when they went about a more heroic and more splendid world than Florian could hope ever to inhabit. It was of their beauty and holiness that the boy thought, with a dumb yearning to be not in all unworthy of these bright, dear beings. That was the longing—to be worthy,—which possessed Florian as he stood waiting for his father to rise from the bench beneath the little tree from the East. There, the Duke also seemed to meditate, about something rather pleasant.