Coth said, “Return to us, dear master! return, and with the brave truth do you make an end of your people’s bragging and vain lies!”
But Manuel said: “No. For Poictesme has now, as every land must have, its faith and its legend, to lead men more nobly and more valorously than ever any living man may do. I, who was strong, had not the strength to beget this legend: but it has been created, Coth, it has been created by the folly of a woman and the wild babble of a frightened child; and it will endure.”
Coth replied, brokenly: “But, master, we are men of this world, a world made of dirt. Oh, my dear master, we pick our way about that dirt as we best can! The results need surprise nobody. The results are rather often, in a pathetic fashion, very admirable. Should this truth be disregarded for a vainglorious dream!”
And Manuel answered: “The dream is better. For man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams.”
26.
The Realist in Defeat
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
HERE Yaotl ended thinking, and put aside the scrying-stone. And his thought was no longer of Manuel, and nothing was apparent in the Place of the Dead save Yaotl and the image of Yaotl and Coth standing there, in the apparel of an emperor, alone and small and remarkably subdued looking, between the vast black naked twins.
“It would appear,” said Yaotl, “that some men are no more tractable than are the gods when the affair concerns a keeping of oaths. And so Toveyo will be remembered in this land for a long while.”
And Coth answered, rather drearily: “Yes; it is such fools as you and I, Messire Yaotl, who create unnecessary trouble everywhere. Well, I also am now released from my oath! And my master has spoken bitter good sense. The famousness of Manuel is but a dream and a loud jingling of words which happen to sound well together; it is a vanity and a great talking by his old wife and my gray peers: and yet, this nonsense, it may be, will hearten people, and will serve all people always, better than would the truth. And my faith is a foolishness, in that, because of a mere oath,—like your Star Warriors’ Word of the Thingumajigs, sir,—I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.”