══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THUS, then, it was that, in the November following Guivric’s encounter with the Sylan, Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, to become yet another convert to the great legend of Manuel.
Kerin was converted almost instantaneously. For when the news of Kerin’s return was public, Holmendis soon came that way, performing very devastating miracles en route among the various evil and ambiguous spirits which yet lurked in the rural districts of Poictesme. The saint was now without any mercy imprisoning all such detected immortals right and left, in tree-trunks and dry wells and consecrated bottles, and condemning them in such exiguous sad quarters to await the holy Morrow of Judgment. With Holmendis, as his coadjutor in these praiseworthy labors, traveled the appearance of Guivric the Sage.
And when St. Holmendis and Glaum-Without-Bones (in Guivric’s stolen body) had talked to Kerin of Nointel about the great cult of Manuel the Redeemer which had sprung up during Kerin’s pursuit of knowledge underground, and had showed him the holy sepulchre at Storisende and Manuel’s bright jewel-encrusted effigy, and had told about Manuel’s ascent into heaven, then old Kerin only blinked, with mild, considerate, tired eyes.
“It is very likely,” Kerin said, “since it was Manuel who gave to us of Poictesme our law that all things must go by tens forever.”
“Now, what,” said Glaum, in open but wholly amiable surprise, “has that to do with it?”
“I have learned that a number of other persons have entered alive into heaven. I allude of course to Enoch, whose smell the cherubim found so objectionable that they recoiled from him a distance of five thousand, three hundred and eighty miles. I allude also to Elijah; to Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; to Hiram, King of Tyre; to Ebed Melek the Ethiop; to Jabez, the son of Prince Jehuda; to Bathia, the daughter of a Pharaoh; to Sarah, the daughter of Asher; and to Yoshua, the son of Levi, who did not go in by the gateway, but climbed over the wall. And I consider it quite likely that Dom Manuel would elect to make of this company, as he did of everything else, a tenth.”
Thereafter Holmendis said, rather dubiously, “Well—!” And Holmendis talked again of Manuel....
“That too seems likely enough,” Kerin agreed. “I have learned that these messengers from the gods to our race upon earth are sent with commendable regularity every six hundred years. The Enoch of whom I was speaking but a moment since was the first of them, in the six-hundredth year after Adam. Then, as the happy upshot of a love affair between a Mongolian empress and a rainbow, came into this world Fo-hi, six hundred years after Enoch’s living; and six hundred years after the days of Fo-hi was Brighou sent to the Hindoos. At the same interval of time or thereabouts have since come Zoroaster to the Persians, and Thoth the Thrice Powerful to the Egyptians, and Moses to the Jews, and Lao Tseu to the men of China, and Paul of Tarsus to the Gentiles, and Mohammed to the men of Islam. Mohammed flourished just six hundred years before our Manuel. Yes, Messire Holmendis, it seems likely enough that, here too, Manuel would elect to make a tenth.”
Then pious gentle old Glaum-Without-Bones began to speak with joy and loving reverence about the glories of Manuel’s second coming....