“Consider how holy Gonfal also perished as a martyr among the infidels of Inis Dahut, after his chaste resistance to the improper advances of their queen! There, madame, was a very soul-stirring example for you, because you brunettes are not easy to resist.”
“Get along with you, you rogue! My eyes stay dark and keen enough to see that what hair I have is white in these days.”
“Then also, pious Miramon Lluagor, it is well known, converted many hundreds of the heathen about Vraidex, by the great miracle which he wrought when Koshchei the Deathless, and Toupan, the Duke of Chaos, and Moloch, Lord of the Land of Tears, and Nergal, the Chief of Satan’s Secret Police,—and several thousand other powers of evil whose names and infernal degrees at this instant evade me,—came swarming out of hell in the form of gigantic bees.”
“It is known that such favor was vouchsafed by Heaven to the faith and the prayers of Miramon. Ninzian, indeed, was present at the time, and told me about those awful insects. Each was about as large as a cow, but their language was much worse. Nevertheless—”
But Jurgen was nowhere near done. “Then Guivric,” he pointed out,—“Guivric of Perdigon, also, in whom the old leaven stayed longer than in the others, so that for a while he kept some little faults, they say, in the way of pride and selfishness,—Guivric got wholly rid of these blemishes after his notable trip into the East to discomfit single-handed the signal schisms of the pernicious and sinister Sylan. There was never a sweeter nor a more prodigally generous nor a more generally lovable saint upon earth than all found Guivric after his return from exorcising that heathen heresiarch into a mere pile of bones; and so the dear old Heitman stayed up to the glorious hour of his seraphic death.”
“That is true. I recall the change in Guivric, and it was most edifying.”
“Do you recall, also, madame, how the venerable Kerin went down to teach the truth about the Redeemer in the deepest fastnesses of error and delusion! and how he there confuted, one by one, the frivolous scientific objections of the overseers of hell,—with a patience, a painstakingness and a particularity surprising even in an apostle,—in an argument which lasted twenty years!”
“That also is true. In fact, it was his own wife who told me about it. Nevertheless—”
But Jurgen was still talking. “Lastly, madame, my beloved father Coth, as a matter of equally general knowledge, went as an evangelist among the brown-skinned and black-hearted unbelievers of Tollan. He introduced among them the amenities of civilization and true religion. He taught them to cover their savage nakedness. And, in just the manner of holy Gonfal, Coth likewise subdued the goad of carnal desire and the prick of his flesh—not once, but many times,—when Coth also was tempted by such an ill-regulated princess as but to think of crimsons the cheek of decency.”
The Countess said, meditatively: “You and your cheek—However, do you go on!”