“You said just now, monsieur my father,” Florian stated, a trifle worried, “that we of Puysange have not always imitated the good examples of St. Hoprig. Have we been very bad?”
Monsieur de Puysange had put on his plumed hat, but he stayed seated. He appeared now, as grown people so often do, amused for no logical or conceivable reason: though, indeed, the Duke seemed to find most living creatures involuntarily amusing.
He said: “We have displayed some hereditary foibles. For it is the boast of the house of Puysange that we trace in the direct male line from Poictesme’s old Jurgen. That ancient wanderer, says our legend, somehow strayed into the bed-chamber of Madame Félise de Puysange; and the result of his errancy was the vicomte who flourished under the last Capets.”
Young Florian, in accord with the quaint custom of the day, had been reared without misinformation as to how or whence children came into the world. So he said only, if a little proudly, “Yes,—he was another Florian, I remember, like me.”
“There were queer tales about this first Florian, also, who is reputed to have vanished the moment he was married, and to have re-appeared here, at Storisende, some thirty years later, with his youth unimpaired. He declared himself to have slept out the intervening while,—an excuse for remissness in his marital duties which sceptics have considered both hackneyed and improbable.”
“Well,” Florian largely considered, “but then there is Sir Ogier still asleep in Avalon until France has need of him; and John the Divine is still sleeping at Ephesus until it is time to bear his witness against Antichrist; and there is Merlin in Broceliande, and there is St. Joseph of Arimathæa in the white city of Sarras—and really, monsieur my father, there is Melior, and all the rest of King Helmas’ people up at Brunbelois.”
“Are you still dreaming of your Melior, tenacious child! Certainly you are logical, you cite good precedents for your namesake, and to adhere to logic and precedent is always safe. I hope you will remember that.”
“I shall remember that, monsieur my father.”
“Certainly, too, this story of persons who sleep for a miraculous while is common to all parts of the world. This Florian de Puysange, in any event, married a granddaughter of the great Dom Manuel; so that we descend from the two most famous of the heroes of Poictesme: but, I fancy, it is from Jurgen that our family has inherited the larger number of its traits.”
“Anyhow, we have risen from just being vicomtes—”