Duke Pasquale’s Ring

For many years now Avram Davidson has been one of the most eloquent and individual voices in science fiction and fantasy, and there are few writers in any literary field who can hope to match his wit, his erudition, or the stylish elegance of his prose. His recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy (collected in his World Fantasy Award-winning The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, and just this year re-released in an expanded and updated hardcover version as The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas), for instance, are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers. Davidson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, and the World Fantasy Award. His books include the renowned The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rogue Dragon, Peregrine: Primus, Rork!, Clash of Star Kings, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas With Oysters, and The Redward Edward Papers. His most recent books are Vergil in Averno, the collection The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, and, in collaboration with Grania Davis, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.

In the vivid and evocative story that follows, one of the Doctor Eszterhazy stories, Davidson lovingly crafts a milieu as rich and multi-layered and intricate as the finest mosaic, introducing us to a king without property and to a sinister man who has some sinister ways of getting what he wants . . . and demonstrating in an unsettling fashion the wisdom behind the ancient warning, Touch Not the Cat.

The King of the Single Sicily was eating pasta in a sidewalk restaurant; not in Palermo: in Bella. He had not always been known by that title. In Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, he had for long decades been known chiefly as an eccentric but quite harmless fellow who possessed many quarterings of nobility and nothing in the shape of money at all. But when the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and all of southern Italy being the other one) was rather suddenly included into the new and united Kingdom of Italy, ostensibly by plebiscite and certainly by force of Garibaldean arms, something had happened to the inoffensive old man.

He now put down his fork and belched politely. The waiter-cook-proprietor came forward. “Could the King eat more?” he asked.

“Im[belch]possible. There is no place.” He patted the middle-front of his second-best cloak.

“What damage,” said the other. His previous career, prior to deserting a French man-of-war, had been that of coal-heaver. But he was a Frenchman born (that is, he was born in Algeria of Corsican parentage), and this was almost universally held to endow him with an ability to cook anything anywhere in Infidel Parts better than the infidel inhabitants could. And certainly he cooked pasta better and cheaper than it was cooked in any other cook-shop in Bella’s South Ward. “What damage,” he repeated. “There is more in the pot.” And he raised his brigand brows.

“Ah well. Put it in my kerchief, and I shall give it to my cat.”

“Would the King also like a small bone for his dog?”

“Voluntarily.”

He had no cat; he had no dog; he had at home an old, odd wife who had never appeared in public since the demise of her last silk gown. The bone and extra pasta would make a soup, and she would eat.

With the extinction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies something had gone flash in the old man’s brain-pan: surely Sicily itself now reverted to the status of a kingdom by itself? Surely he was its rightful king? And to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would read, he explained the matter, in full genealogy, with peculiar emphasis on the four marriages of someone called Pasquale III, from one of which marriages he himself descended. Some listened. Some read. Some even replied. But, actually, nothing happened. The new King of Italy did not so much as restore a long-forfeited tomato-patch. The ousted King of Naples did not so much as reply. Neither did Don Amadeo, King of Spain (briefly, very briefly, King of Spain). On the other hand, Don Carlos, King of Spain (pretended or claimed), did. Don Carlos was an exile in Bella at the moment. Don Carlos perhaps heard something. Don Carlos perhaps did not know much about Pasquale III, but Don Carlos knew about being a pretender and an exile. He did not precisely send a written reply; he sent some stockings, some shirts, a pair of trousers, and a cloak. All mended. But all clean. And a small hamper of luncheon.

By the time the King of the Single Sicily had dressed in his best and gone to call on Don Carlos, Don Carlos was gone, and—to Bella, as to Spain—Don Carlos never came back.

That was the nearest which Cosimo Damiano (as he chose to style himself) had ever come to Recognition. Stockings, shirts, and trousers had all worn out; the cloak he was wearing even now. And to pay for the daily plate of pasta he was left to his semi-occasional pupil in the study of Italian, calligraphy, and/or advanced geometry.

“To see again,” he said, now rising, and setting upon the tiny table a coin of two copperkas.

“To see again,” said the cook-shop man, his eyes having ascertained the existence of the coin and its value. He bowed. He would when speaking to Cosimo Damiano refer to him in the third person as the king, he would give him extra pasta past its prime, he would even donate to a pretense-dog a bone which still had some boiling left in it. He might from time to time do more. A half-cup of salad neglected by a previous diner. A recommendation to a possible pupil. Even now and then a glass of thin wine not yet “turned.” But for all and for any of this he must have his coin of two copperkas. Otherwise: nothing. So it was.

D. Cosimo D., as sometimes he signed himself, stooped off homeward in his cloak. Today was a rich day: extra pasta, a soup-bone, and he had a half-a-copperka to spare. He might get himself a snuff of inferior tobacco wrapped in a screw of newspaper. But he rather thought he might invest the two farthings in the merchandise of Mother Whiskers, who sold broken nut-meats in the mouth of an alley not far off. His queen was fond of that. The gaunt and scabby walls, street-level walls long since knocked bare of plaster or stucco, narrowed in towards him as he went. The old woman was talking to another customer, not one who wanted a farthingworth of broken nut-meats, by his look. But Mother Whiskers had another profession: she was by way of being a witch, and all sorts of people came to see her, deep in the smelly slums where she had her seat.

She stopped whatever she had been saying, and jerked up her head to D. Cosimo D. “Gitcherself anointed?” was her curious question.

“I fear not. Alas,” said D. Cosimo D., with a sigh.

She shook her head so that her whiskers flew about her face, and her earrings, too. “Gitcherself anointed!” she said. “All kinds o’ work and jobs I c’n git fer a ’nointed king. Touch fer the king’s evil—the scrofuly, that is—everybuddy knows that—and ringworm! Oh my lordy, how much ringworm there be in the South Ward!” Oft-times, when he was not thinking of his own problems alone, Cosimo wondered that there was not much more cholera, pest, and leprosy in the South Ward. “—and the best folks c’n do is git some seventh son of a seventh son; now, not that I mean that ain’t good. But can’t compare to a ’nointed king!”

And the stranger, in a deep, murmurous voice, said No, indeed.

Poor Cosimo! Had he had to choose between Anointing without Crowning, and Crowning without Anointing, he would have chosen the Holy Oil over the Sacred Crown. But he was allowed no choice. Hierarch after hierarch had declined to perform such services, or even service, for him. There was one exception. Someone, himself perhaps a pretender and certainly an exile, someone calling himself perhaps Reverend and Venerable Archimandrite of Petra and Simbirsk had offered to perform . . . but for a price . . . a high one . . . it would demean his sacred office to do it on the cheap, said he. And, placing his forefinger alongside his nose, had winked.

Much that had helped.

“Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” grumbled Old Mother Whiskers. “But I do my best for y’, anyway. Gotchyou a stoodent, here. See?”

Taking a rather closer look than he had taken before, Cosimo saw someone rather tall and rather richly dressed . . . not alone for the South Ward, richly . . . for anywhere, richly. There was something in this one’s appearance for which the word sleek seemed appropriate, from his hat and his moustache down to his highly polished shoes; the man murmured the words, “Melanchthon Mudge,” and held out his hand. He did not take his glove off (it was a sleek glove), and Cosimo, as he shook hands and murmured his own name, felt several rings . . . and felt that they were rings with rather large stones, and . . .

“Mr. Mudge,” said Mother Whiskers; “Mr. Mudge is a real classy gent.” And D. Cosimo D. felt, also that—though Mr. Mudge may have been a gent—Mr. Mudge was not really a gentleman. But as to that, in this matter: no matter.

“Does Mr. Mudge desire to be instructed,” he asked, “in Italian? In calligraphy? Or in advanced geometry? Or in all three?”

Mr. Mudge touched a glossy-leather-encased-finger to a glossy moustache. Said he thought, “For the present, sir. For the present,” that they would skip calligraphy. “Madame here has already told me of your terms, I find them reasonable, and I would only wish to ask if you might care to mention . . . by the way of, as it were, general reference . . . the names of some of your past pupils. If you would not mind.”

Mind? The poor old King of the Single Sicily would not have minded standing on his head if it would have helped bring him a pencil. He mentioned the names of a surveyor now middling-high in the Royal and Imperial Highways and to whom he had taught advanced geometry, of several ladies of quality to whom he had taught Italian, and of a private docent whom he had instructed in calligraphy: still Mr. Mudge waited, as one who would hear more; D. Cosimo D. went on to say, “And, of course, that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is—”

“Ah,” said Mr. Melanchthon Mudge, stroking his moustache and his side-whiskers; “that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is.” His voice seemed to grow very drawn-out and deep.

Plaster and paint, turpentine and linseed oil had all alike long since dried, inside and outside the house at Number 33 Turkling Street, where lived Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy; though sometimes he had the notion that he could still smell it. At the moment, though, what he chiefly smelled came from his well-fitted chemical laboratory, as well as from the more distant kitchen where—in some matters Eszterhazy was old-fashioned—Mrash, his man-cook, reigned. Old Mrash would probably and eventually be replaced by a woman. In the meanwhile he had his stable repertory of ten or twelve French dishes as passed down through generations of army officers’ cooks since the days of (at least) Bonaparte; and when he had run through it and them and before running through them and it again, Mrash usually gave his master a few days of peasant cooking which boxed the culinary compass of the fourth-largest empire in Europe. Ox-cheek and eggs. Beef palate, pigs’ ears, and buckwheat. Potatoes boiled yellow in chicken broth with unborn eggs and dill. Cowfoot stew, with mushrooms and mashed turnips. And after that it was back to boeuf à la mode Bayonne [sic], and all the rest of it as taught long ago to his captors by some long ago prisoner-of-war.

Today, along with the harmless game of “consulting the menu-book,” Mrash had a question, “if it pleased his lordship.” Eszterhazy knew that it pleased Mrash to think that he cooked for a lordship, and had ceased trying to convince him of it not really pertaining. So, “Yes, Mrashko, certainly. What is the question?” There might or might not be a direct answer.

“What do they call that there place, my lordship, a boo?”

Philologists have much informed the world that the human mouth is capable of producing only a certain limited number of sounds, therefore it was perhaps no great feat for Eszterhazy at once to counter-ask, “Do you perhaps mean a zoo?”

“Ah,” said Mrash the man-cook, noncommittally. He might, his tone indicated, though then again he might not.

Eszterhazy pressed on. “That’s the short name for the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoological Gardens and Park, where the plants and creatures mostly from foreign parts are.” Mrashko’s mouth moved and seemed to relish the longer form of the name. “It’s the second turning of the New Stonepaved Road after Big Ludo’s Beer Garden,” added ‘his lordship.’

Mrash nodded. “I expect that’s where it come from, then,” he said.

“ ‘Come from’? Where what came from, Cooky?”

Cooky said, simply, “The tiger.”

Eszterhazy recalled the comment of Old Captain Slotz, someone who had achieved much success in obtaining both civil and military intelligence. Captain Slotz had stated, “I don’t ask them did they done it or I don’t ask them did they not done it. Just, I look at them, and I say, Tell me about it.”

“Tell me about it, Mrashko-Cooky.”

The man-cook gestured. “See, my lordship, it come up the lane there,” gesture indicated the alley. “And it hop onto yon wood-shed, or as it might be, coal-shed. Then it lep up onto the short brick bake-building. Then it gave a big jump and gits onto the roof of what was old Baron Johan’s townhouse what his widow live in now all alone saving old Helen, old Hugo, and old Hercules what they call him, who look after her ladyship what she seldom go out at all anymore.” Eszterhazy listened with great patience: “and then it climb up the roof and until it reach the roof-peak. It look all around. It put its front-limbs down,” Mrash imitated this, “and it sort of just stretch . . . streeettch . . .”

Silence.

“And then?”

“Then I get back to me work, me lordship.”

“Oh.”

“Nother thing. I knew that there beast have another name to ‘t. Leopard. That be its other name. I suppose it come from the book. I suppose it trained to go back. Three nights I’ve seen it, nor I haven’t heard no alarm.” He began making the quasi-military movements which indicated he was about to begin the beginning of his leaving.

“Does it have stripes? Or spots?”

Mrash, jerking his arms, moving stiff-legged, murmured something about there being but the one gaslamp in the whole alley, there having been not much of a bright moon of recent, hoped the creature wouldn’t hurt no one nor even skeer the old Baroness nor old Helen; and—finally—“Beg permission to return to duty, your lordship. Hup!”

“Granted—And—Mrash! [Me lord!] The next time you see it, let me know, directly.”

The parade-ground manner of the man-cook’s departure gave more than a hint that the next meal would consist largely of boiled bully-beef in the mode of the Royal and Imperial Infantry, plus the broth thereof, plus fresh-grated horseradish which would remove the roof of your mouth, plus potatoes prepared purple in a manner known chiefly to army cooks present and past all around the world. Eszterhazy looked out the window and across the alley. At ground level, the stones of the house opposite were immense, seemingly set without mortar. Cyclopean, the word came to him. Above these massive courses began others, of smaller pieces of masonry. The last storey and a half were of brick, with here and there a tuft of moss instead of mortar. The steep-pitched roof was of dull grey slate. And though he could see this all quite clearly, he could see no explanation for the story which his old cook, never before given to riotous fancy, had just recounted to him. Long he stared. Long he stared. Long he considered. Then he rang the bell and asked for his horse to be saddled.

The old Chair of Natural Philosophy had finally been subdivided, and the new Chair of Natural History been created. Natural Philosophy included Chemistry, Physics, Meteorology, Astronomy. Natural History included Zoology, Ichthyology, Botany, Biology. Dr. Eszterhazy, having bethought him of the knot of loafers always waiting on hand near the Zoo to see whose horse shied at the strange odor when the wind blew so, decided to stop off first at the office of the Royal-Imperial Professor of Natural History, who was ex cathedra the Director of the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoological Gardens and Park. Said, “Your tigers and leopards. Tell me about them.” The Professor—it was Cornelius Crumholtss, with whom Dr. E.E. had once taken private lessons—said, crisply, “None.”

“What’s that?”

“The tiger died last year. The Gaekwar of Oont, or is it his heir, the Oontie Ghook? has agreed to trade us a tiger for three dancing bears and two gluttons—or wolverines as some call them—but he’s not done it yet. Leopards? We’ve never had one. We do have the lion. But he is very old. Shall I have spots painted on him for you? No? Oh.”

Eszterhazy had gone to the Benedictine Library. There were things there which were nowhere else . . . and, not seldom, that meant nowhere else . . . once, indeed, he had found the Papal Legate there, waiting for a chance to see something not even in the Vatican Library. It was stark and chill in the whitewashed chamber which served as waiting-room. Who was waiting for what? Eszterhazy was waiting for Brother Claudius, for even Eszterhazy might not go up into the vaulted hall where the oldest books were unless Brother Claudius showed him up; not even the Papal Legate might do so, and it was almost certain that not even the King-Emperor might . . . in the unlikely instance of the King-Emperor’s going to the Benedictine Library to look for a book . . . or anywhere else, for that matter. E. assumed that the tall, thin man slumped in the corner was also waiting for Brother Claudius. By and by, in came the lay-brother who acted as porter, and wordlessly set down a brazier of glowing coals before withdrawing.

The man in the corner moved. “Ah, good,” he murmured. “One’s hands have grown too cold.” He got up, and, moving to the fire-cauldron, thrust his hands into it and drew them out filled with hot coals glowing red. His manner seemed abstracted. An odor of singeing hair was very slightly perceptible. Eszterhazy felt his own flesh crawl. Slowly, quite slowly, the man poured the red hot coals back upon the fire. “You are Doctor Eszterhazy,” next he said.

The statement required no confirmation. “And you, sir? Who?”

Very slowly the tall body turned. A long finger stroked a long moustache. “I? Oh. I am the brother of the shadow of the slain. The vanguard of the shadows of the living. I—”

Light. “Ah yes. You are the medium, Mr. Mudge.”

“I am the medium, Mr. Mudge. As well. Oh yes.

“I am really very pleased to have this occasion to meet the eminent Dr. Eszterhazy,” said Mr. Mudge.

“Indeed,” murmured the eminent, very faintly questioning. He himself was certainly very interested at meeting the eminent Mr. Mudge. But, somehow, he rather doubted that he was really very pleased.

“Yes, indeed. Ah. You are not here . . . or perhaps you are here . . . to consult the Second Recension of the Malleus Maleficarum?”

The doctor said that he was not, not adding that both witchcraft and the fury it had once aroused alike tended to be productive of a definite dull pain between and in back of his eyes. “I am here to consult the Baconian Fragment. If it is by Friar Roger. Which is doubtless subject to doubt. If it is a fragment; the end of the parchment is rather fragmented, but the text itself seems complete.”

Mr. Mudge nodded. He seemed, certainly, to follow the comments. But his manner seemed also to be rather faintly abstracted. “Now, I wish to ask you about your former tutor,” he said, and touched his full red tongue to his full red lips, and smiled. In fact the smile was not without a certain appeal, an effect, however, spoiled by . . . by what? . . . by the man’s having rather yellow teeth?

“Which former tutor? I have had really a great many, as I began my formal education comparatively late, and was obliged to make up for lost time. So . . .”

“He calls himself sometimes Cosimo Damiano, though I understand that this is not precisely his legal name.”

Well. Someone learned enough to read old books in Latin, and he wished to enquire about old—“Yes. And what did you wish to enquire?”

Could Dr. Eszterhazy recommend him? Certainly. The old man’s Italian knowledge was encyclopedic, his calligraphy was exquisite, and his knowledge of advanced geometry was . . . well . . . advanced. It was at this point that the door opened and Brother Claudius came in, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his habit. “Come with me,” he directed in a hollow voice; and, as he did not say to whom he was saying this, and as he immediately turned and left again, they both followed him. Through many an icy corridor. Up many a worn, yet steep, flight of stairs. Into the vast vaulted hall lined to twice a man’s height with books whose ancient odors still had, as far as Eszterhazy was concerned, the power to thrill. The monk gestured him to a table on which a book-box reposed. The monk next gestured Mr. Mudge further on and further on, eventually waving him to another table. On which, or so it seemed at a glance, another book-box reposed. Eszterhazy sat at the bench and opened the box.

Immediately he saw that a mistake had been made, but automatically he turned a few pages. Instead of the rather cramped and fuddled Italian hand which he had expected, massive and heavy ‘black letter’ met his eye. One line seemed to unfold itself in particular; had it at one time been underlined and the underlining eradicated? For the parchment was scraped under the line. The mind of a demon is not the same as the mind of a man. Indeed, no. And the Malleus Maleficarum was not the same as the Baconian Fragment.

“Pray excuse me, most reverend Brother,” he heard the voice of Mr. Mudge, “but have you perhaps inadvertently given my item of choice to the learned doctor, and his to me?”

The hollow tone of Brother Claudius said, “Each has that which is proper for him now to read.” And he removed a small box from his sleeve, and took snuff. The learned doctor, what was it they called Roger Bacon? Ah yes: Doctor Mirabilis. Well—Suddenly he looked up; there was Melanchthon Mudge; had he floated! Usually the old floor sounded. What? The old floor always sounded.

Always but now.

“Brother Claudius has gone now. Shall we change books?”

They changed books.

By and by, he having principally noted what he had come to note, and the day having grown chiller yet, Eszterhazy rose to leave. Without especial thought, he blew upon his hands. With an almost painful suddenness his hand spun round towards the other man; he had not blown upon his hands to warm them! But the other man was gone.

It had been intimated to Eszterhazy that his name had been ‘temporarily subtracted’ from the military Active List for quite some years now, “for the purpose of continuing his education”—that meanwhile he had already obtained the baccalaureate, the licentiate, and two doctorates—and that unless he wished his name moved over to the Inactive List, very well, Engli, better Do Something about this. What he had done was to obtain transfer to the new Militia Reserve (as distinct from the not so new Reserve Militia), and as a result of having done so, found himself the very next weekend serving the twenty-five hours and twenty-five minutes which constituted his monthly service time with the Militia Reserve. (The Reserve Militia, as is well-known, had no monthly service time and instead required an annual service time of three weeks, three days, and three hours.) On reporting to the Armory he learned that although his having obtained a degree in mathematics had automatically shifted him from the Infantry to the Engineers, what was required of him this time had to do with another degree altogether.

“Surgeon-Commander Blauew’s got the galloping gout again, Major Eszterhazy, and as you are, it seems, also a Doctor of Medicine, we need you for Medical Officer right now, and you can build us a fortress next month; haw haw!” was the adjutant’s greeting.

“Very well, Adjutant. Very well. My that’s a nasty-looking spot on your neck, there, well, well, I’ll have a look at it after I’ve taken care of everything else”; and Temporary-Acting-Medical Officer Eszterhazy, E., moved on away, leaving the adjutant prey to dismal thoughts; and perhaps it would teach him not to play the oaf with his betters. The T.A.M.O. examined a number of candidates for the Militia Reserve, passed some, rejected some; made inspections which resulted in the Sanitary Facilities being very hastily and yet very thoroughly doused down with caustic soda and hot water; and delivered a brief and dispassionate lecture on social diseases to officers and men alike: to the great disease of an elderly paymaster who said he doubted it was right to expose the younger men to such scientific language: perhaps not exactly what he meant. Sounds of drill command rang through the large hall with a surprising minimum of echo, in great measure because Eszterhazy (who had not read Vitruvius’s Ten Books for nothing) was instrumental in obtaining a theater-architect as consultant during the hall’s construction.

Eventually it was time for commissioned officers to withdraw for wine and rusks, a snack traditionally taken standing up even where there might be facilities for sitting down. “Seen you in the Bosnian Campaign,” someone said; and, the Temporary-Acting-Medical Officer turning his head, recognized a face once more familiar than lately. The face was not only now older, it was much, much redder. “Just dropped in to pay my respects,” said the old soldier. “I am just here on my biennial leave. I am just a retired major in my own country, but I am a full colonel in the service of H.H. the Khedive of Egypt. Can I recruit you? Guarantee you higher rank, higher pay, higher respect, several servants, and heaps and heaps of fascinating adventure.”

The younger man confessed himself already fascinated. He looked the Khedivial colonel in the man’s slightly bulging, slightly blood-shot, entirely blue eyes, and said, “Tell me about it.”

He listened without a single interruption until Col. Brennshnekkl got onto the subject of hunting in the Southern Provinces of H.H.—the southernmost boundaries of which evidently did not, as yet, exist. “—at least not on any official map; we intend to push ’em as far south as we can push ’em; now where was I? Ah yes! Hippo! Ah, you need a champion heavy ball for hippo! Say, a quarter of a pound. Same as elephant. Same as rhino.” Perhaps indecisive which of the three to talk about first, Brennshnekkl paused.

Dr. Eszterhazy heard himself asking, “What about tiger?”

“Tiger, eh. Well, you would naturally want a lighter rifle for soft-skinned game. Say, a .500 . . . or better yet a .577 Express—a Lang or a Lancaster or any of the good ones.”

Eszterhazy stroked his beard, trimmed closer than in the mode of fashion. “But are there tigers in Africa?”

The colonel appeared to be trying to say Yes and No simultaneously. To aid him he sipped his wine. Then: “Well, strictly to speak, no: there are no tigers in Africa. However, lots of chaps call them tigers. Am I making sense? I mean, leopards.”

Something somewhere jingled. Or perhaps there was a ringing in the doctor’s ears. He repeated, dully, “Leopards?”

Colonel Brennshnekkl explained that in some way leopards were more than tigers. Tigers, like lions, went along the level ground; leopards sometimes hid up trees. And pounced. Carefully setting down his wine, he bared his teeth, turned his hands into paws and his fingers into claws, and gave something in the way of a lunge which was nevertheless certainly intended to imitate a pounce. It seemed to his younger comrade that people for some reason had lately begun to imitate leopards for him. Was it a trend?

“What else do they do up trees? Besides prepare to pounce? Do they have their, no, one would not say ‘nests,’ do they have lairs—?”

No. No, leopards did not have lairs in trees. Well. Not precisely. In the manner of colonels the world over since the beginning of time, this one began to tell a story. “—recollect one day my native gun-bearer, chap named Pumbo—Pumbo? Yes. Pumbo. Faithful chap. Pumbo. Came running over to me and handed me my .577 Express. Said, ‘Master, tiger,’ which is to say, of course, leopard, said ‘tiger up tree, look-see, shoot-quick!’ ” He raised an imaginary leopard-gun at an angle. “And as I was sighting, sighting, damn me! What did I see? A bloody young zebra or was it an antelope, bloody leopard had killed it by breaking its neck, as they do, and dragged it up into the upper crutch of the tree where I suppose it could hang, you know, all that galloping the wild game there does, making it muscular and tough—’nother thing,” temporarily lowering his nonexistent rifle, the colonel got his wine back, looked at Eszterhazy over the rim of the mug; said, “ ’nother thing. Hyenas can’t get to it. Once it’s up a tree. You know. Well—”

But that was the last which Eszterhazy was to hear of the matter, for at that moment a whistle sounded to signal a return to the duties of the twenty-five hours and twenty-five minutes; a whistle? It was the sort of nautical whistle called a boatswain’s pipe and it was traditional to sound it at this point. No one at all knew why. That was what made it traditional.

In what had been the oldest and smallest schloss in Bella, long since escheated to The Realm, was the chamber of a gentleman whom rumor connected with the Secret Police. He was called by a number of names. Eszterhazy called him Max.

“Engelbert Kristoffr.”

“Max.”

Segars and decanters. “How is the great plan for the education going?”

“Engelbert Kristoffr” said that it was coming along well enough. He supposed Max knew that he already had the M.D. and Phil.D. Yes? And the D.Sc. and D.Mus. were likely next. Of course degrees were not everything. Right now he was not taking a schedule of courses for any degree, but he considered that his education continued daily nonetheless. Max hummed a bit in this throat. “You shall certainly become the best-educated man in the Empire. I hope you begin to think of some great reforms. Everyone thinks that old Professor Doctor Kugelius is our best-educated man. Why? Because each year he gives the same lecture on The Reconciliation of Aristotle and Plato and it is actually fifty lectures and he delivers it in Latin and what is his conclusion? That, after all, Aristotle and Plato cannot be reconciled; you did not come to hear me talk about Aristotle and Plato.” Said Max.

The guest shook his head. “I came to hear you talk about Mr. Melanchthon Mudge,” he said.

There was indeed a file on Melanchthon Mudge and Engelbert Kristoffr read it and then they began to talk again. Said Max: “You well recall a Cabinet decision to hold the laws against witchcraft in abeyance. It simply would not do, in this day and age, for our country to start a prosecution for witchcraft. And as we prefer to believe that the matter is confined to harmless old women living in remote villages, there is really no mechanism to handle a latter-day sorcerer.”

An ash was flicked off a segar with impatience. “I don’t want the man burned or hanged or shackled, for heaven’s sake. We have experts in the sophistry of the law. Can’t they simply get an excuse to get the man out of our country?”

Max very very slightly poured from the decanter to the mug. “Not so easily. Not when he has a lot of powerful friends. One of whom, are you not aware, is the aunt of your cousin Kristoffr Engelbert, of the Eszterhazy-Eszterhazy line; you are not aware? Ah, you were not, but are now. Having read the file.” The file reminded him of the Sovereign Princess Olga Helena of Damrosch-Pensk; she was of course not sovereign at all, she was the widow of Lavon Demetrius, whose status as one of the once-sovereign princes of the Hegemony had been mediatized while he himself was yet a minor: the family retained titles, lands, money, and had nothing any longer to do with governation at all; was this a good thing? If they were under the spell of Mr. Mudge, probably.

“Nor is she the only one. Not every name is in the file; listen.” Max repeated some of the names not in the file. Engelbert Kristoffr winced. “Is it that they are so immensely impressed because he makes the spirits blow trumpets, move tables, ring bells? In my opinion: no. They are so immensely impressed because they are weak in character and he is strong in character and he is very, very bad in character and his performances are merely as it were items chosen off a menu. Melanchthon Mudge, as he calls himself, has a very long menu, and if he did not impress the credulous by doing such things, well, he would impress them by doing other things. Was it only because Louis Napoleon and Amadeus of Spain and Alexander of Russia believed the spirits of the dead were at this fellow’s command, lifting tables and sounding trumpets and ringing bells, that they gave him jewels? I don’t think so. And I might ask you to look at what happened afterwards: Louis Napoleon deposed, dying in exile; Amadeus deposed and in exile; Alexander of Russia fatally blown up by political disaffecteds.” Max banged his mug sharply on the scarred tabletop. “And another thing. If he has such powers, why does he employ them lifting tables and tinkling bells? Why does he content himself with gifts of jewels from kings and emperors?”

Engelbert Kristoffr Eszterhazy thought of another question: Why is he—via the thought of him?—tormenting me? But he said, suddenly, aloud, “Because the mind of a demon is not the same as the mind of a man.”

Said Max, “Well, there you are. There’s your answer.”

But, wondered Eszterhazy, to which question? Having left the old, small castle to Max, its present master, Dr. Eszterhazy long wandered and long pondered. Was it indeed his fortune to have become involved with a Count Cagliostro, a century after the original? Was Melanchthon Mudge really “Melanchthon Mudge”? Could anyone be? And if not, who then was he? The learned doctor did not very much amuse himself by conjecturing that perhaps Giuseppe Balsamo had not really died in a Roman dungeon ninety years ago, but—

Of the so-called Pasqualine Dynasty [a learned correspondent wrote Dr. Engelbert] few literary remains exist, and almost without exception they are very dull remains indeed. Only one reference do I find of the least interest, and that is to a so-called Pasqualine Ring. Do your old friends know about it? Legends for a while clustered thick, stories that “it had been worn upon the very thumb of Albertus Magnus,” is one of them; I cannot even say if thumb-rings were known in the day of good Bishop and Universal Doctor—you may also have heard it assigned to the thumbs of two anomalous Englishmen named Kelly (or Kelley) and Dee—and one of the innumerable editions of the Faustusbuch—but enough! Do think of me when you see your old and noble tutor, and ask him . . . whatever [and here the learned correspondent passed on to another subject entirely]. Why had not Engelbert Eszterhazy, Ph.D., M.D., long since removed his old and (perhaps, who knows) royal tutor and wife to a comfortable chamber in the house at 33 Turkling Street? He had offered, and the offer had with an exquisite politeness been declined. Why had he not bestowed a pension? To this question: the same reply. He had, then, to relieve the burden of want, done nothing? No, not nothing. One day he had encountered the owner of the tottering tenement in which lodged the King and Queen of the Single Sicily in Exile, herself (the owner) a widow incessantly bending beneath the burden of many debts, herself; part in sorrow, part in shame, she said that she would shortly have to double their rent: Dr. Eszterhazy easily persuaded her to mention no such thing to them, but to apply instead to him quarterly for the difference: done. So. There he was one day, visiting, and presently he asked, “And the ring of Duke Pasquale?”

“We have it, we have it,” said ‘the Queen.’ In her haggard, ancient way, she was still beautiful. “We have it. So,” she said. “It is all that we have. But we have it. So.”

Eszterhazy sat silent. “I will have them bring you a cup of chocolate. Clarinda?” she raised her voice. “Leona? Ofelia?” As, not surprisingly, none of these imaginary attendants answered the summons, the Queen, murmuring an apology, rose to “see what they are all doing,” and withdrew into a curtained niche behind which (Eszterhazy well knew) reposed the tiny charcoal brazier and the other scant equipment of their scant kitchen. Politely, he looked instead at the King.

The general outlines of the face and form of him who, with infinite sincerity, called himself ‘King of the Single Sicily,’ would have been familiar to, at least, readers of the British periodical press; for they were the form and features of Mr. Punch (himself originally a native of The Italies, under the name of Signor Punchinello); though the expression of their faces was entirely different. His lady wife did not in any way resemble Judy. The King now said, “I shall have the Lord Great Chamberlain bring it.” As Cosimo Damiano’s former pupil was wondering what piece of gimcrack or brummagem the, alas, cracked imaginations of the pair would work on, the King said, with a gesture, “The view of the hills is remarkably clear today, my son. We are high here. Very high. See for yourself.” Eszterhazy politely rose to his feet, went to the window. The window was now graced with a single curtain; there had at one time been two; and some might have seen a resemblance to the other in the garment which the Queen now wore wrapped around her ruined silken dress rather in the manner of a sari.

Clear or not, the view was so restricted by the crumbling walls of the adjacent tenements as to consist of an irregular blur a few feet tall and a few inches wide. Behind him he heard a soft scuffling, shuffling sound. He heard the King say, “Thank you. That is all. You may go.” After a moment Eszterhazy felt it safe to say that the view was indeed remarkable. In reply, he was informed that his chocolate was ready. He withdrew slowly from the view, homeopathically of the hills of the Scythian Highlands, and otherwise and very largely of goats, pigs, washing, dogs, children, chickens, nibbishtips, and other features of the always informal great South Ward; and took his seat. And his chocolate.

It was very good chocolate. It should have been. He had given them a canister of it a while ago, and some, with a vanilla-bean in it to keep it fresh. As, each time he visited, there was always a cup given to him, either the canister—like the pitcher of Philemon and Baucis—was inexhaustible, or the royal couple never drank any at all. Well, well. It gave them pleasure to give, and this was in itself a gift.

“And this,” said the King, after a moment, “is the ring of Duke Pasquale.” And he produced an immensely worn little box not entirely covered anymore with eroding leather and powdering velvet. And, with a dexterous push, sprang up the lid. It made a faint sound.

Eszterhazy with great presence of mind did not spill his hot chocolate into his lap.

Evidently the tarnished band was silver, as—evidently—the untarnished and untarnishable band was gold. They were intertwined and must have been the very devil to keep clean, whenever the task was still being attempted. Though somewhat misshapen—perhaps something heavy had rested on it, long ago? while it was being perhaps hidden, long ago?—the width hinted that it might indeed have been a thumb-ring. Long ago. And set into it was a diamond of antique cut, more antique certainly even than the ring-work.

“There were once many,” said the old man.

“Oh yes,” said the old woman. “The wonder of it, as it must have been. The Pasqualine Diamonds, as they were called. Who knows where the others are. We know where this one is. He besought us to sell. So, so. Conceive of it. Sell? We did not even show.”

Eszterhazy brought himself back to his present physical situation, drank off some of the chocolate. Asked, “And do you wear the ring? Ever? Never? Often?”

The old woman shook her mad old head. “Only on appropriate occasion.” She did not say what an appropriate occasion would be; he did not ask. He observed that the ring was on a chain, one of very common metal. His finger touched it. He raised his eyes. “It is the custom to wear it on a chain,” she said. “When one wears it, it should be worn on a chain, like a pendant. So, so, so. My late and sainted father-in-law wore it on a silver chain, and his late and sainted father wore it on a golden one. Thus it should be so. Or,” the pause could not be called a hesitation, “almost always so. So, so, so. One does not wear it on a finger, not even on the thumb; certainly not on the finger; on the thumb, least of all. It would be a bad thing to do so. So, so, so. Very bad, very bad. It is ours to be keeping and ours to be guarding. As you see. So, so. So, so, so.” She coughed.

Her husband the King said, “I shall take it now, my angel.” Take it he did; it was done so deftly and swiftly that Eszterhazy was not sure what was done with it. He had some idea. He was not sure.

Need he be? No.

It was madness to think of these two mad old people living in poverty year after year, decade after decade, when a fortune lay ready to be redeemed. It was made; it was also noble. Turn the ring into money, turn the money into silk dresses, linen shirts, unbroken shoes, proper and properly furnished apartments; turn it into beef and pork and poultry and salad fresh daily, into good wine and wax candles or modern oil lamps—turn it as one would: how long would the money last? Did the ‘King of the Single Sicily’ think just then in such terms? Perhaps. He said, as he accompanied his former pupil to the worm-eaten door, this is what he said: “Today’s fine food is tomorrow’s ordure. And today’s fine wine is tomorrow’s urine. Today’s fine clothes are tomorrow’s rags. And today’s fine carriages are tomorrow’s rubble. And after one has spent one’s long and painful years in this world, one wishes to have left behind at least one’s honor unstained. Which is something better than ordure, urine, rags, and rubble. Something more than urine, ordure, rubble, and rags. Be such things far from thee, my son. Farewell now. Go with the Good God and Blessed Company of the Saints.”

One must hope. Eszterhazy went.

Thus: the Pasqualine Ring.

There had been a meeting of the University’s Grand Ancillary Council, to discuss (once again) the private-docent question; and, Eszterhazy being a junior member, he had attended. The conclusion to which the Grand Ancillary Council had come was (once again) that it would at that specific meeting come to no conclusion. And filed out, preceded by dignitaries with muffs and ruffs and chains of office and maces and staves and drummers and trumpeters. About the necessity of all this to the educational process. Dr. Eszterhazy had certainly some certain opinions; and, being still but a junior member, kept them to himself.

The Emperor, who was ex-officio Protector, Professor-in-Chief, Grand Warden, and a muckle many other offices, to and of the University, did not attend . . . he never attended . . . but, as always, had sent them a good late luncheon instead of a deputy: this was more appreciated. Eszterhazy found himself in discussion over slices of a prime buttock of beef with a Visiting Professor of one of the newer disciplines, “Ethnology” it was called. Older faculty members regarded an occasional lecture on Ethnology as a permissible amusement; further than that, they would not go.

“Where did your last expedition take you?” asked Eszterhazy. Professor De Blazio said, West Africa, and asked Eszterhazy to pass the very good rye bread with caraway seeds. This passed, it occurred to the passer to ask if there were leopards in West Africa. “Although,” he added, “that is hardly Ethnology—”

De Blazio said something very much like, “Chomp, chomp, gmurgle.” Then he swallowed. Then he said, “Ah, but it is, because in West Africa we have what is called the Leopard Society. I believe it to be totemic in origin. Totem, do you know the word totem? A North-American Red-Indian word meaning an animal which a family or clan in primitive society believes to have been its actual ancestor. Some say this creature changes into human form and back again.—Not bad, this beef.—Is it Muller who sees in this the source of heraldic animals? Can one quite imagine the British Queen turning into a lion at either the full or the dark of the moon? Ho Ho Ho.” Each Ho of Professor De Blazio was delivered in a flat tone. Perhaps he felt one could not quite imagine it. “Mustard, please.”

Eating the roast beef, for a few moments, speaking English between mouthfuls, Eszterhazy could think himself in England. And then the stewards came carrying round the slabs of black bread and the pots of goose grease. And he knew that he was exactly where he now thought he was: in Bella, the sometimes beautiful and sometimes squalid capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania.

Fourth largest empire in Europe.

The Turks were fifth.

The gaslights in the great salon in the town-house of old Colonel Count Cruttz were famous gaslights. Cast in red bronze, they were in the form of mermaids, each the length of a tall man’s arm, and each clasping in cupped hands the actual jets for the gas flames as they, the mermaids, faced each other in a great circle: with mouths slightly open, they might be imagined as singing each to each. This was perhaps a high point of a sort in illumination, here in Bella. Well-dried reeds were used to soak up mutton-tallow or other kitchen grease, and these formed the old-fashioned rush lights which the old-fashioned (or the poor) still used at night. They smelled vile. But they were cheap. Their flickering, spurting light was not good to read by. But they were cheap. They were very, very cheap. Tallow-candles. Whale-oil. Colza-oil, allegedly stolen here and there by Tartars to dress their coleslaw. Coal-oil, also called paraffin or kerosene. Gas-lamps. From each pair of red-gold hands the red-gold flames leaped high, soughing and soaring. Often attempts had been made to employ the new experimental gas mantles. But Colonel Count Cruttz always shot them away with his revolver-pistol.

Colonel Count Cruttz looked sober enough tonight; of course, that was subject to change, although it was customary for nothing but champagne to be served at such soirees, and it was not in accordance with his reputation to become shooting-drunk (even gas-mantle-shooting drunk) on such a ladies’ drink as champagne. Still. If a bullet from a revolver-pistol, or two or three, could solve a certain problem of which signs were likely to be shown tonight—if so, gladly would Doctor Eszterhazy ply Colonel Count Cruttz with brandy, vodka, rum, gin, schnapps, and whiskey. Or, for that matter, alcohol absolutus. As, however, it was not to be more than thought of, he would have to . . . what would he have to do?

. . . something else.

In one half of the great salon, the soiree looked like any and every other soiree in Bella: that is, an imitation of a soiree in Vienna, which in turn would be an imitation of one in Paris. Few things bored Eszterhazy more than a Bellanese soiree, though they were, barring boredom, harmless. The other half of the great salon, under the soaring gaslights, was not in the least like every other soiree in Bella, for everyone in that half of the room was gathered around one sole person: a breach of good manners indeed. One might give a ‘reception’ for a particular person and that person might be lionized, surrounded; this was to be expected. But a soiree was not a reception, at least it was not intended to be, and it was good manners neither in those gathered round one person nor for that one person to allow it. But—allow it?

Mr. Mudge reveled in it.

Those in the other half of the room strolled around for the most part by ones and twos, now and then uttering polite words to those they walked with or to those they encountered. What was going to happen? By now Doctor Eszterhazy knew. Someone would give a polite hand-clap. Others would fall silent. Someone would say what good luck they all had. Someone would speak, obliquely, of the Spirits which—or who—had ‘crossed over,’ and how, for reasons not only not made clear but never mentioned, they sometimes were pleased to make use of the “the justly famous Mr. Mudge” as the medium of their attempts to contact the living. Eszterhazy had, he hoped, a most open mind: the received opinion of thousands of years to the contrary, the spirits of the dead were not where they could neither reach nor be reached? Very well. Let the evidence be presented, and he would form . . . perhaps . . . an opinion. But he knew no evidence that any of the so-called spirits had passed their time, whilst living, in tipping tables or sounding very tatty-looking trumpets or ringing lots of little bells; and so he did not think they would do so, now that they were dead, as a means of proving that they were not really entirely dead after all. Mr. Mudge did it (assuming it to be Mr. Mudge who did it); Mr. Mudge did it all very well.

But did any of it need to be done at all? Eszterhazy could not think so. He was not altogether alone.

“Engli, need we got to have all this?” asked a man, no longer at all young, with a weather-beaten and worn . . . worn? eroded! . . . face, stopping as he strolled.

“Not if you do not wish it had, Count.”

The Count almost doubled over in an agony of conviction. “I don’t! I don’t! Oh, I thought nothing when Olga Pensk asked it of me, that was a month ago, always have had a soft spot in me heart for her, lovely young girl her daughter is—But oh I’ve heard such a lot in that month. And I can’t get back to talk to Olga about it. She won’t see me. She’s become that creature’s creature. Look at her, doesn’t take her eyes off him, let me tell you what I have heard.”

But Eszterhazy, saying that perhaps he had heard it, too, urged that this be put off to another time.

“Do something, do something, do something,” begged the Count and Colonel. “I know what I’d love to do, and would do, hadn’t all of us in the Corps of Officers given our solemn vow and oath to his Royal and Imperial Majesty neither to fight duels nor commit homicides; wish I hadn’t. Engli. Engli. You’re a learned chap. You lived how many a month was it with the Old Men of the Mountains, didn’t you learn—”

But Eszterhazy was lightly clapping his hands.

Afterwards, he had brief misgivings. Had he been right to have done it at all? To have done it the way he had done? That Melanchthon Mudge thought this-or-that about it: on this he did not need to waste thought. The Sovereign Princess of Damrosch-Pensk, would she ever forgive him? Too bad, if she would not. But suppose that collegium of white wizards, the Old Men of the Mountains, to hear of it; what would they think? Well, well, he had not depended on what they had taught him for everything he’d done in the great salon of Colonel Count Cruttz’s townhouse. Even the common sorcerers of the Hyperborean High Lands dearly loved the rude, the bawdy, the buffoon; they did not rank with the Old Men, but he had taken some pains to learn from them, too.

And though he told himself that he did not need think about Mr. Mudge, think about Mr. Mudge he did. If he had denounced Mr. Mudge as a heretic; a heresiarch, satanist, and diabolist; if he had made him seem black and scarlet with infamously classical sins? Why, certainly the man would have loved it. Swelled with pride. Naturally. But he, Eszterhazy, had not done it. Nothing of the sort. He had parodied the usual ritual of the séance. He had reduced the introductory words to gibberish and, worse by far than merely that, to funny gibberish. He had made the table tip, totter, fall back, to the audible imitation of an off-color street-song, as though accompanied on, not one trumpet, but a chorus of trumpets, as played by a chorus of flatulent demons. He had done something similar with his summoning-up, in mockery, of the spirit bells. Was it not enough to show how others could do it? Did he have to have them ring in accompaniment to the naughty (recognizable—but who would admit it?) song on the ‘trumpet’?

Well, ‘need.’ Need makes the old dame trot, went the proverb.

He had done it.

The whole doing was a mere five minutes long; but it had, of course, made it utterly impossible for Mudge, with or without others, to give his own performance. Absolutely impossible, right afterwards. And who knows for how long impossible, subsequently? He had lost the best part of his audience, for certainly the effect was ruined. If he would indeed try a repetition, elsewhere, a week, a fortnight, even a month, months later, he would hardly dare do so in the presence of any who had been there then. A single guffaw would have meant death.

And eloquent of death was the man’s face as his eyes met Eszterhazy’s. It was but for a moment; then the face changed. No hot emotion showed as he came up to Eszterhazy, the Colonel Count rather hastily stepping up to be ready, in case of need, to step between them. But no. “Very amusing, Doctor,” said Mr. Mudge. He bowed and said a few courteous words to the host. Then he left. Leaving with him, her own face as though carved in ice, was the Sovereign Princess Olga Helena. Not icy, but perhaps rather confused, was the face of her daughter, the Highlady Charlotte, own cousin to Eszterhazy’s own cousin. Had she, too, believed? Well, it were better she should now doubt. That there were sincere people in the ranks of the spiritualists, the doctor did not doubt. That some were not alone sincere, but, also, even, good, he was prepared to admit. But Mr. Mudge was something else, and if indeed he were sincere, it was in the sincerity of evil.

It made of course no difference to the chemistry of Glauber’s Salts what name was given them or who had first discovered them. But it was a hobby-horse of Eszterhazy’s, one which he so far trusted himself never to ride along the nearer paths which lead to lunacy, that the pursuit of inorganic cathartics marked the real watershed between alchemy and chemistry. The ‘philosopher’ who, turning away from the glorious dreams of transmuting dross to gold, sought instead a means of moving the sluggish bowels of the mass of mankind and womankind, had taken his head out of the clouds and brought it very close to the earth indeed. Quaere: How did the dates of Ezekkiel Yahnosh compare with those of Johann Glauber? Responsum: Go and look them up. That the figures in the common books were unreliable, E.E. knew very well. He had also known (he now recalled) that there was a memorial to the great seventeenth-century Scythian savant somewhere in the back of the Great Central Reformed Tabernacle, commonly called the Calvinchurch, from the days when it—or its predecessor—was the only one of that faith in Bella.

Q.: Why might he not go right now and copy it? R.: Why not?—unless it were closed this hour on Sunday night. But this caveat little recked with the zeal of Predicant Prush, even now ascending into the pulpit, as Eszterhazy tried to collect his information as unobtrusively as possible from the marble plaque set in the wall. “My text, dear and beloved trustworthy brothers and sisters,” boomed the Preacher from beneath the sounding-board, “is Jeremiah, V. 6. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: everyone that goeth out shall be torn to pieces: because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings are increased. Miserable sinners, there is nevertheless hope in repentance!” cried out the Predicant in a plenitude of Christian comfort. And went on to demonstrate that the animals mentioned in the text were types, which is to say, foreshadowings, with the lion signifying the Church of Rome, the wolf implying Luther; and the leopard, recalcitrant paganism. As for transgressions and backsliding, Dr. Prush gave them quite a number for exempla, ranging from Immodest Attire to Neglect Of Paying Tithes. “Woe! Woe!” he cried, smiting the lectern.

But Eszterhazy was not concentrating on the sermon. There rang incessantly in his ear, as though being chanted into it by something sitting upon his shoulder, only the words a leopard shall watch over their cities . . .

And, when back at home, he examined his scant notes for the dates of Ezekkiel Yahnosh, he found that, really, all that he had written in their place was Jeremiah, V. 6.

Many a set of hoopshirts worn in Bella in their time, many a crinoline worn in Bella in its time, many a bustle worn in Bella (around about then or not a long span later being their time) had been fashioned in the ever-fashionable establishment of Mademoiselle Sophie, Couturière Parisienne. Mlle. Sophie was a native of a canton perhaps better known for its cuckoo-clocks than its haute couture, but she had nevertheless plied a needle and thread in Paris. She had plied it chiefly in replacing buttons in a basement tailor-shop until her vast commonsense told her to get up and go out of the basement into the light and air. She hadn’t stopped going until she reached Bella, and if her trip and her beginnings in business had indeed been ‘under the protection’ of a local textile merchant who sometimes visited Paris on business, why, whose affair was that? That is, who else’s affair? Nevertheless, most of the women’s garments in Bella owed nothing to the fact that Mlle. Sophie gained her bread by the pricks of her needle; and perhaps a slight majority of the women’s garments in Bella owed nothing at all to what was worn in Paris. Even as Eszterhazy paused to throw down and step upon a segar, several woman—evidently sisters—passed by dressed in the eminently respectable old high burger style: costly cloth stiff with many a winter day’s embroidery, the bodices laced with gold-tipped laces, each stiff petticoat of bright color slightly shorter than the one underneath. No one else even much noticed.

Still, someone laughed, and it was not a nice laugh. Eszterhazy did not move his head, but his eyes slightly moved. Just across the narrow street was Melanchthon Mudge, clad in fur-coat and fur-hat whose gloss must have represented a fortune in sable and other prime pelts: what was he laughing at? Slowly approaching was a woman by herself. She moved with difficulty. She had been limping with a side-to-side motion which caused her short and heavy body to rock in a manner that allowed little dignity. Nothing about her was rich, and certainly not the rusty black cloth coat which covered the upper part of her dingy black dress: truth to tell it was not even over-clean. Her face was not young and it was not comely and it seemed fuddled with effort. Such things as gallantry and pity aside, if one thought the grotesque laughable, then one would understandably laugh at the sight of her. But such laughter, merely the concomitant of a country culture which laughed at cripples and stammerers, was more puzzling when it came from Mudge. The woman clearly heard the laugh, was clearly not indifferent to it. She tried to walk on more swiftly, rocked and swayed more heavily; there was another laugh; abruptly Mudge walked off.

On the poor woman’s head was a bonnet of the sort which had been favored, perhaps a generation ago, by fashion in the North American provinces. So, on the spur of the moment, Eszterhazy, lifting his own hat, addressed her in English.

“You don’t have such picturesque native costume,” the slightest inclination of his head towards the wearers of the local picturesque costume, “in your own country, I believe, ma’am.”

She slowly rocked to a stop and looked at him with, at first, some doubt. “No, sir,” she said, “we don’t, and that’s a fact. We haven’t had the time to develop it. Utility has been our motto. Maybe too much so. You don’t know who I am, do you? No. But I know you, Mr. Estherhazy, if only by sight, for you’ve been pointed out to me. Reverend Ella May Butcher, European Mission, First Spiritualist Church, Buffalo, New York.” She extended her hand, he—automatically—had begun to stoop to kiss it—she gave a firm shake—he did not stoop. “My late husband was very well acquainted with President Fillmore. But you don’t know President Fillmore here.” She was in this correct. Neither Eszterhazy personally nor the entire Triune Monarchy had known President Fillmore: there . . . or anywhere.

“I’ve come to show those deep in sorrow that their beloved ones have been saved from the power of the shadow of death. It ain’t for me to say why the spirits of those who’ve passed over are sometimes pleased to use me as their medium, Mr. Estherhazy. We have settings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, the Good Lord willing, at eight o’clock p.m. in the room at the head of the stairs in the old Scottish Rite hall. No admission charge is ever made; love offering only.” If Reverend Ella May Butcher was offered much such love, there was nothing to show it. The flat level of her voice did not vary as she asked, “Do you know that man who laughed at me just now?”

The shouting of the teamsters and the clash of hooves on the stone blocks obliged him to raise his voice. “We have met,” he said.

Widow Butcher looked at him with her muddy eyes. “There are spirits of light, sir; and there are spirits of darkness. That one’s gifts never came from the light. I have to go on now. I hope to see you at one of our settings. Thank you for your kindness.” He bowed slightly, lifted his hat, she lifted her skirts as high as was proper for a lady to lift them (a bit higher than would have been proper perhaps in London, but surely not too high for Bella and doubtless not too high for Buffalo, New York, where her late husband had been very well acquainted with President Fillmore), and prepared to cross the broader street. At this signal the filthy scarecrow which was the crossing-sweeper leaned both hands on the stick of his horrid broom and plowed her a way through the horse-dung. Eszterhazy watched as she poked in her purse for a coin; then a knot of vans and wagons went toiling by, laden high with barrels of goose-fat and rye meal and white lard and yellow lard. And when they had gone, so had she.

He had not expected to meet Mr. Mudge within the week, but he had not expected to be in the South Ward within the week, either. Someone had reported to him that a certain item of horse-furniture was in a certain popular pawnshop there, and someone had said that—not having been redeemed when the loan expired—the item (it was a mere ornament, but then, too, perhaps the horse which first had borne it had also borne the last Byzantine Emperor) was now for sale.

“Impossible,” said a familiar voice outside the pawnship.

And another voice, less familiar, but . . . familiar . . . said . . . asked, “ ‘Impossible’? Impossible for you to do it when two Emperors and one King have already done it?”

There was D. Cosimo D., looking as though he would be away, and there was Mr. Mudge, looking as though he would not let him go. “I do not know other than nothing of it,” said Cosimo.

Mudge said he would ‘explain the matter yet again.’ The briefly reigning King Amadeus of Spain had been pleased to give Mr. Mudge a gift of jewels. Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, had given him some other jewels. And a third such royal gift had come from Alexander, late Czar of all the Russians. “By the merest coincidence,” said Mudge, “they contained elements of the so-called Pasqualine Diamonds. That is to say, I now have them all. I can show you the Deeds of Gifts.”

“I wish not to see them. Gifts!”

“That is to say, all but the thumb-ring of Duke Pasquale. Without it, the set is incomplete. You may name a price. Money, lands; lands and money—whatever. I shall execute a will demising the jewels all to your noble house. I—”

“I, sir. know nothing. Have nothing to sell. Desire nothing to obtain. Ah, my son”—to Eszterhazy—“You have heard? Am I not right?”

And Eszterhazy said, “The King of the Single Sicily is right.”

A week later, as Eszterhazy emerged from his club in Upper Hunyadi Street, a tall man seemed to uncoil from a bench, and, in an instant, stood before him. It was Melanchthon Mudge. Melanchthon Mudge was before him, the bench was alongside of him, a stone pillar of the colonnade was behind him. Only one way of passage remained, but he did not seek to take it. The man wished to do it so? well, let him do it so, then.

“Be quick,” he said.

“Dr. Eszterhazy,” said the tall, thin man, earnestly; “you have twice affronted me.” Eszterhazy looked at him with a face which was absolutely expressionless, and said absolutely nothing. Mudge seemed rather disconcerted at this; and, a moment having passed, he compressed his lips, something like a frown beginning to appear: this vanished almost at once. A smile replaced it; one might easily see how very many had regarded it as a charming smile. Very often. “You have, Doctor, twice affronted me, I say. But I cannot believe that you ever meant to do so. This being the case, you will take no affront when I explain to you what the affronts were”—and still, Eszterhazy did not move. He continued to gaze with motionless eyes.

Mudge cleared his throat. Then he held up one finger of his left hand and he pressed upon it with one finger of his right. “To begin with, although perfectly aware of my perfect reasons for wishing to purchase the Pasqualine Ring, you urged its present owner not to part with it.” He paused. No reaction. No reply. A second finger came forward on the extended left hand, was pressed upon with the forefinger of the right. “You also, doubtless purely as a jape, counterfeited—by some species of parlor trick which in another and lesser man I should term ‘charlatanry’—counterfeited those great gifts which are mine as donatives of the Spirits. Now, sir, I do urge you, Dr. Eszterhazy, not to presume to affront me a third time. I am in process of taking a most important step in my personal life. It would mean that we would meet so very often that I should desire to be upon no terms with you save the very friendliest. But if you—”

Eszterhazy’s eyes shifted suddenly, transfixed the other man with such a sort of look that the man winced. A brief cry, as of pain, was torn from his throat. “Wretch, rogue, and scoundrel,” Eszterhazy said; “I well know that you have it in your black mind to propose marriage to my cousin’s cousin, the Highlady Charlotte of Damrosch-Pensk. This, it does not lie within my power to prevent; that is, her mother being in something close to vassalage to you, we both know why, you may propose. I shall tell you what does lie within my power. By the terms of her late father’s will, the Highlady Charlotte is in effect a ward of the Emperor until her thirtieth year—unless she is lawfully married before that day. I have already seen to it that a full statement of your depraved behavior in other countries, your disgusting statements set by your own hand in writing in regard to another lady, and the abhorrent circumstances under which you became, first famous, and then rich—I have with a great and grim pleasure seen to it that the Lord President of the Privy Council now knows it all. The present Emperor will never give his assent without consulting the Lord President. And—”

But this next sentence was scarcely begun when something unseen stuck Eszterhazy a blow and sent him with great force reeling against the pillar from where he had been standing several feet away. It was of course painful, it left him breathless and without power of speech: all his effort went into remaining upright; he clutched the pillar, backwards, with both his hands.

Even as he felt himself stagger, he saw the medium, face set for one fearful second into a rictus of rage, go striding away and down the steps. His cloak flew almost level with the ground. There was another voice echoing in Eszterhazy’s ears, very faint it was, very faintly echoing. There are spirits of light, sir; and there are spirits of darkness. That one’s gifts never came from the light . . .

Eszterhazy, coming up the slum stairs to where the old couple lived, was not at first surprised to hear the sounds of altercation. The place was, after all, a slum, and slum-dwellers tend when angered not merely to speak out but to shout. What surprised him was to hear the old noblewoman’s voice raised, even briefly. What could—Ah. Ahah. The local muckman was trying to collect garbage fees. So. True, that the work was damnably hard. True that in the South Ward the fees were often damnably hard to collect. True, that it was hard to imagine the old couple’s scanty diet producing enough garbage to be worth feeing. And, true, bullying was a time-established way of collecting the fees. Or trying to.

A fat, foul smell, filthy and greasy, announced its owner even before the sight of the fat, foul body on the landing by the door—fat, foul, smelly, greasy—voice coarse, loud, hectoring. “—wants me entitles!” the voice shouted. “Wants me ten copperkas!” Fat, smeary shoulders thrusting at partially closed door. “ ’r I takes the tea-pot off the cloth and the cloth off the table and—” The third take was never mentioned, the door flew open wider, there stood the dauntless little ‘Queen,’ something glinted, something flashed. The muckman gave a hoarse howl and fell back, struggling for balance. The door closed. The muckman whirled around, flesh quivering; flesh, where a hand fell for a moment away, flesh bleeding. Scratches on the rank, besmeared arm. Made by—made by what? “That she-cat,” grumbled the man, fear giving way to mere astonishment and dull defeated rage—made by small embroidery shears? or—

“That she-cat has claws,” said the muckman, and stumped away down. The rank smell of him alone remained.

Inside, a moment later, there was of course no mention of it all. They seemed a bit more haggard, a bit more harried than usual. He asked if there were not, was there not? something wrong. They looked at him with wasted eyes. “The ring. Duke Pasquale’s ring. The ring. He shall never have it. Never.”

“Cosimo, I saw a very curious thing.”

“And what was that, my dear one?”

“I saw a leopard, Cosimo, leaping from roof to roof, till it was out of sight. Was that not curious?”

“Indeed, my dear one, that was curious indeed. Not many people are vouchsafed to see visions. By and by, perhaps, we will understand. The soup is now very warm. Let me feed you, as I already have our spoon.”

If this were a nightmare, thought Eszterhazy, then he would presently shout himself awake, and . . . “If this were a nightmare”! And suppose this were not? But these thoughts were all peripheral. He felt things he had never felt before, sensed that for which he knew no terms of sensation. Impressions immensely deep, and immensely unfamiliar. And then some sort of barrier was broken, and he felt it break, and things ceased to be immeasurably alien; but he was not comforted by this, not at all, for everything which was now at all familiar was very horribly so: he heard very ugly sounds made by things he could not see and he saw (if only fleetingly or on the periphery of vision) very ugly things doing things he could not hear. In so far as it resembled anything it resembled the grotesque paintings of the Lowlander Jan Bos: but mostly it resembled nothing. Fire bubbled in his brain like lava. To breathe was to be tortured by his own body. Terror was a solid thing sucking marrow from his bones. He caught sight of a certain known face and on the face, its mouth slightly parted and wet yellow teeth exposed, was an expression of lust and glee.

Who was this, suddenly seizing his arm, face now a chalky mask with charcoal smudges under the eyes? “My son, he will not grant it, he will not grant it! I said to his secretary, ‘Father, forget that I am the rightful King of the Single Sicily and consider only that I am a child faithful to Mother Church and with a wife who is sick. Father, sick!’ But he will not grant it! Marón!”

What Cosimo Damiano was doing in the Mutton Market of the Tartar Section, Eszterhazy did not know; but then he did not know at all what he himself was doing there. And if he himself had, in a state of confusion of mind, wandered far—why then, why not his old tutor? “Sir. Who will not grant what?”—though, already, he had begun to guess.

“Why, license for an exorcism! Our parish priest reminds me that he himself, though willing, cannot do so without a faculty from the bishop . . . in this case the archbishop . . . that is, the Prince-Patriarch of Bella. I begged the secretary, ‘Father,’ I said—But it doesn’t matter what I said. Away he went with his head to one side and back he came with his head to the other side, and he shook his head. His Eminence will not grant it . . .”

Ancient custom, having the force of canon law, decreed that the Archbishop and Prince-Patriarch of Bella be called “His Eminence” just as though he were a cardinal; and His Eminence’s secretary was Monsignor (not merely “Father”) Macgillicuddy. Msgr. Macgillicuddy was descended from those Erse warlords whose departure from their afflicted Island has been compared to the flight of the wild geese: unlike the nonmetaphorical ones, those wild geese never flew back, but drifted slowly from one Catholic kingdom to another. Msgr. Macgillicuddy had been 200 years out of Ireland and no one still in Ireland looked as exquisitely Irish as did Msgr. Macgillicuddy. Perhaps it was a shame that there was no Gaelic monarch at whose court he might be serving instead, and perhaps he did not think so. He belonged to no order, he was attached to no ethnic faction of the Empire or the Church, and if he said that the Prince-Patriarch-Archbishop would allow no exorcism, then that—absolutely—as Eszterhazy well knew—was that.

To one side a bow-legged Tartar made a sudden dive at a scaping ram, bucked it shoulder to shoulder, slipped arm and hand between the beast’s forelegs, seized a hind leg and pulled forward; the ram went backward, the Tartar swiveled around and, having dropped the leg, from behind seized the animal’s shoulders. The ram sat upright, and could not move. Along came the butcher’s men with their ropes. Escape had been short-lived. A covey of quaint figures, the old Tartar women of the Section, huddled into shawls and veils and skirts and pantaloons, began to gather, each intent on the fresh mutton for the evening’s shashliks. Escape had been very short-lived. For a while the ram had been king of the mountains, defending his meadow of grass and wild thyme and his harem of ewes. But that was over now.

As to why Cosimo Damiano wanted a faculty for his parish priest to perform an exorcism, the old man would be anything but specific. His cracked old brain was cracking wider now under the strain of—of what? Of something bad, of bad things, things which were very, very bad: and happening to him. And to his sick old wife. Charms were not enough, amulets and talismans not enough, holy water and prayers and Latin Psalms: not enough. Any more. Cornuto, usually efficacious against the strega? Not enough.

“But . . . Sir . . . do give me an example?—a single sample?”

Almost as though not so much obeying or answering his former pupil as being made a thrall by something else, in a second the body of the old man twisted and the face of the old man twisted and the voice of the old man changed . . . swift, sudden: movement, sound: frightful . . . Eszterhazy tottered back. Another second and the old man was as before, and trembling with terror. With a stifled croaking wail he scuttled off.

The aged females of the Tartar Section were wending their ways to their homes, each with a portion of mutton-meat wrapped in a huge cabbage-leaf. Eszterhazy paid no attention. In the face of the old man a moment ago, in the body of the old man then, in the grum, grim voice, he had for one second, but for a significant one, recognized and been horribly reminded of the same frightful features of his own recent nightmare . . . if such they were . . . the phrase psychic assault came to his mind. What was there in his clean, well-furnished laboratory to help them all against this? Eszterhazy muttered, “Anoint thee, Satan.” And he spat three times.

And all these . . . these assaults . . . against himself, against the old man and the old wife . . . why? Merely affront and pride? Because, come down to common denominators, what were they! What was it? It was the ring of Duke Pasquale, that antique family heirloom with which the aged couple would not part. Was it indeed because he coveted the jewel as part of a set otherwise incomplete, that the current enemy was setting these waves of almost more than merely metaphysical assault? Could he not obtain, with his own wealth, a replica of real silver, real gold, real diamond? And . . . yet . . . if that was not why he wanted the Pasqualine Ring . . . then why did he want the Pasqualine Ring?

As long as he lived, Eszterhazy was never to be entirely sure. But he was to become sure enough.

And still the assaults continued.

About ten a.m. and there was Colonel Count Cruttz. Unusual. For one thing; for another, what was it the older man was muttering to himself? It sounded like Saint Vitus. An invocation? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In Bella—

The Hospice of Saint Vitus in Bella at the time of its founding had been just that—a hospice for pilgrims seeking cure for what might have been (in modern terms) chorea, cerebral palsy, ergot poisoning, certain sorts of lunacy, or . . . many things indeed. By and by most people had learned not to bake bread from moldy rye, and the rushing torrents of the pilgrimages had slowed to trickles; still, the prolongedly lunatic had to be lodged somewhere, it being no longer fashionable to lose them in the forest or lock them in a closet: and so, by the time of King Ignats Salvador (the Empire did not yet exist), the Hospice had become the Madhouse and St. Vitus’s Shrine its chapel. It was quite true that besides the common enclosures there was a secluded cloister for insane nuns and, far on the other side, one for mad monks and priests; it was not true, common reports notwithstanding, that there was also one for barmy bishops.

“Good mid-morning to you, Colonel Count Cruttz; very well, then: Fritsli.”

“Mi’ morning, Engli. Say, you are a gaffer at St. Vitus, ain’t you?”

“I am one of the Board of Governors, yes.”

“Well, I want a ticket. Morits. One of my footmen.” The colonel-count looked haggard.

Dr. Eszterhazy reached out from a pigeon-hold a dreaded “yellow ticket,” a Form For Examination Prior to Commitment: sighed. “Poor Morits. Well, this should get him seen to, promptly;” he signed it large. And, did he not, “poor Morits” indeed might gibber and howl for hours in the public corridors, waiting his turn on standby. “What has happened to him? Morits, mmm. Pale chap, isn’t he?”

Master confirmed that man was indeed a pale chap. That was him. What had happened! Man had gone mad, was what happened. In the night, not long before dawn. Screams had rocked the house—and it was an old house with thick walls, too. Insane with terror, Morits. “Mostly he just screamed and tried to hide himself in his own armpits, but when you could make out what he was saying while screaming, why, it was always the same thing. Always the same thing. Always.” Cruttz turned his haggard gaze on Eszterhazy.

Who asked, “And what was that? This . . .‘the same thing’ . . . ?”

Cruttz wet his lips. Repeated, “ ‘On the ceiling! On the ceiling! The witch-man! On the ceiling!’ ”

“The . . . ‘witch-man’? Who and what was that?”

Heavily: “That is who and what and which the people call this Hell-hound, Melanchthon Mudge.”

Silence. Then, “Very well, then. One understands ‘the witch-man.’ But. What and what does he mean by ‘on the ceiling’?”

A shrug. “I am damned if I know. And I feel that just by knowing the fiend I might be damned. And so poor Morits has been screaming, struggling, be pissing himself for hours now, and brandy hasn’t helped and neither has holy water nor holy oil and so I’ve come for the yellow ticket. See?”

Eszterhazy saw only scantly. “Had the man . . . Morits . . . ever before showed signs of—?”

Reluctantly: “Well . . . yes . . . sort of. Nervous type of chap, always was. Which is all that keeps me from shooting down that swine like a mad dog with my revolver-pistol.” That, and—the Emperor having indicated a keen dislike for having people shot down like mad dogs with revolver-pistols—that and the likelihood of such an action’s being surely followed by a ten-year exile to the remote wilderness of Little Byzantia, where the company of the lynx, the bear, and the wild boar might not suffice for the loss of more cosmopolitan company.

Colonel Count Cruttz took up the “yellow ticket” and as he was doing so and murmuring some words of thanks and farewell, his eyes met Eszterhazy’s. The latter felt certain that the same thought was in both their minds: was Mudge punishing the house in which he had been humiliated? Was Mudge doing this? Was Mudge not doing this? And, if so, what might Mudge not do next?

One was soon enough to learn.

Quite late that morning as he was being examined in St. Vitus by the Admitting Physician, pale Morits not only ceased struggling, but—upon being instructed to do so—had stood up. Quietly. Dr. Smitts applied the stethoscope. And Morits, pale Morits, gave a great scream, blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and—“I caught him in my arms. The stethoscope was pulled from my ears as he fell, but I had heard enough,” said Dr. Smitts.

“What did you hear?”

“I heard his heart leap. And then I heard it stop. Oh, of course, I did what I could do for him. But it never started again. No. Never.”

“Never . . .”

Was this what Mudge had done next?

Eszterhazy thought it was.

Later, some years later, Eszterhazy was to acquire as his personal body-servant the famous Herrekk, a Mountain Tsigane, who stayed on with him . . . and on and on . . . But that was later. This year the office was being filled (if filled was not too strong a verb) by one Turt, who had qualified by some years as a barber; and if experience folding towels well enough had not made Turt exquisite in the folding and unfolding of and other cares pertaining to Eszterhazy’s clothes . . . well . . . one could not have everything. Could one? Turt awoke him; Turt brought, first, the hot coffee, and next the hot water and the scented shaving-soap. Next Turt would bring the loose-fitting breakfast-gown and on a tray the breakfast, which—perhaps fortunately—Turt did not himself cook. Turt meant to do well, Turt clearly meant to do better than he did, and it was not Turt’s fault that he breathed so very heavily. Turt (short for Turtuscou) was a Romanou, and it was a fact of social life in the Triune Monarchy that sooner or later one’s Romanou employee would vanish away on what the English called “French leave” and return . . . by and by . . . with some fearsome story of dreadful death and incapacitating illness amongst far-away family; if/when this ever happened, Eszterhazy had determined to terminate Turt’s service. But Turt, though not bothersomely bright, was bright enough, and either saw to it that all his near of kin stayed in good health or else he simply allowed them to die without benefit of his attendance in whatever East Latin squalor pertained to them around the mouth of the Ister.

On this morning Eszterhazy, dimly aware of great pain, was more acutely aware of Turt’s breathing more heavily than usual. Had Turt gasped? Had Turt cried out? If so, why! Eszterhazy sat bolt up in bed. “Dominů, Dominů!” exclaimed Turt.

“What? What?”—heavily, anguished.

For reply Turt pointed to the floor. What was on the floor? Turt’s Lord looked.

Blood on the floor.

Instantly the pain flared up. Instantly, Eszterhazy remembered. He had been sleeping soundly and calmly enough when something obliged him to wake up. Some dim light suffused the room. Some ungainly shape was present, visible, in the room. Something long, attenuated, overhead. Something overhead. Something barely below the ceiling. Something which turned over as a swimmer turns over in water. Something with a human face. The face of Mr. Mudge, the medium. How it glared at him, with what hate it glared down at him. Its lips writhed up, and, The ring! it said. The ring, the ring! I must have the ring! It made a swooping, scooping gesture with one long, long incredibly long lengthened arm. That was the first pain. What was it which the hand now held and showed to him? It was a heart which it held and showed to him; a human heart. And, whilst the words echoed, echoed, Ring! Ring! the fingers tightened and the fingers squeezed and that was the second pain. The third. The—

It had been a dream, a bad, bad, dream; a nightmare dream. Only that, and nothing more. In that case, why this dreadful pain upon his heart? And why the blood upon the—

“A nosebleed,” he heard himself say. And heard Turt say, “No, sir. No. Not.”

“Why not?”

Turt began making many gestures, the burden of them being that, for one thing, there was no blood upon his master’s nose and none upon his master’s sheets. That, furthermore, blood dropping from the side of the bed to the floor would have left a stain of a certain size, only. And that this stain was of a larger and a wider size. Which meant that it had fallen from a greater height. And as Turt’s hand went up and pointed to the ceiling, the hand and all the rest of Turt’s body trembled; the Romanou are of all the races of the Empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania the most superstitious by far, and their legends teem and pullulate with accounts of uampyri and werewolves and werebears and werebats and werecats; and of ghoulies and ghosties and things which do far worse in the night than merely go boomp.

—then why this fearsome pain? Eszterhazy started to sit up, cried out, gestured towards the cabinet, gasped, “The small blue bottle—” The elixir of foxglove made him feel better, then (Turt supplying this next bottle unbid) the spirits of wine made him feel better yet. Then he gestured to the still red stain, directed, “Clean it up.”

Turt, so often metaphorical and metaphysical, chose now to be literal. And simply sopped a corner of the napkin in the still-steaming coffee, stooped, wipe, wipe: ’twas done. He made the dirtied cloth vanish. Straightened up. Smoothed his sallow face. “My Dominů’s coffee,” he said. Soon afterward he brought the shaving-water and the scented soap. Eszterhazy had for a while little to do and much to think about (there was not, considering his beard, much to shave, either: the neck and the cheekbones; but Turt trimmed also).

Eszterhazy, while his servant scraped and clipped, considered his own peril. Presumably, Mudge was anyway somewhat in fear of him, whereas he had been in no way afraid of poor Morits. Presumably, he himself was therefore . . . safe? Well . . . safer. . . .

But for how long?

He recalled that face, high up, hateful. To prove the cheat of the servers of the Idol of Bel at Babylon, Daniel had scattered ashes on the floor; would it now be necessary to scatter them on the ceiling?

Eszterhazy was in bed. Bed. Boat. Boat. As he drifted by in the darkness he heard the sound of the district watchman rapping the butt of his staff on the flagstone pave at the corner. Presently he would hear it rapping on the other corner. He did not. He was not there. He was somewhere else. He knew and did not know where. It was in a great yard somewhere, an open waste of rubble and huts. The South Ward, somewhere. Behind a mouldering tenement. Between it and a riven old wall. Up there in that room, that room there, with the broken shutter banging aslant, lived an old man and an old woman, there, there in the night. Here, down here, concealed in a half-sunken pit, someone was hiding and biding time. Someone tall and sleek and grim. Someone muffled in a cloak. Was waiting. The cracked old bell began to toll in the tower of the Madhouse of Saint Vitus. Someone chuckled. It was not a nice sound. At once Eszterhazy knew who it was. I am the brother of the shadow of the slain, the vanguard of the shadow of the living. I am the medium, Mr. Mudge. As well.

Mr. Mudge moved up out of the half-dug pit, and who knew for what gross usage the pit was to have been digged; moved forward, ahead, face intent. Nearer to the tottery old tenement, nearer to the window behind the broken slant shutter, Eszterhazy desperate to stop him, but paralyzed, unable to call out, to move. To breathe. Shutter suddenly springing open. Clap. Bang. Cough. Someone springing out and down. Someone? Something? Dark, dark, very dark. Fluid movement, there in the dark. Warn Mr. Mudge? Why? No. Mr. Mudge not there. Where? His cloak flying, floating, in the blackness night; Mr. Mudge fleeing before it as though, paws on its shoulders, it coursed him through the night. No: Something else coursed him through the blackness night. Scorn and contempt on his face giving way to concentration, concentration to effort, effort to—Run, Mudge, run!—to concern, to care, to alarm, faster, faster, faster, leap and run and climb and clamber and jump and clamber and climb and run and leap; close behind him something followed faster yet and something else for a second flashed and glinted, something else gleamed at or about the neck of . . . something . . . as sometimes one sees a glint or gleam where the fond master of an animal has fastened a metal sigil advising of its name and owner; or like some ring on a hand moving suddenly in the dim and flaring lamps—

—screamed, Mr. Mudge; Quaere: What did Mr. Mudge scream? Responsum: Mr. Mudge screamed for help. Q.: How did Mr. Mudge scream for help and to what or whom? R.: To “Belphegor, Belzebub, Baphomet, Sathanas, à mon aide O mes princes, aidez-moi, à moi, à moi, à—” The prayer, if prayer it was, decayed into a continuous repetition of the broad a-sound as Mr. Mudge fled, leaping; as . . . something . . . leaping, coughing, followed after him; a great, sudden, abrupt coughing sound, a great forelimb chopping down Mr. Mudge: and all his imprecations sank powerlessly beneath even the level of derision . . .

Eszterhazy, body spent with having followed the hazards of the chase, awoke bathed in sweat and in bed. One thing alone remained still quick within his ears, and though it seemed not to be for this night before, yet perhaps it somehow was. That she-cat has claws, an odd voice said.

That she-cat has claws.

Dawn.

Mrash.

“Your Lordship, that tiger come a-wandering again-time!”

Eszterhazy lifted dulled, fatigued eyes. “The—? Ah . . . the leopard? You saw it running along and up the roofs?” What was it he felt, now? It was unbalanced that he felt now. He had with infinite difficulties maintained a stance against attack, assault, terror, pain, and worse. He felt this was gone now. But he was infinitely tired now. Infinitely tired. He dared be infinitely careful, lest he fall, now. What had and what was happening?

Mrash said, “No, lordship. I seen it running down the roofs. And as I looked, so I seen. ‘Seen what’? Why, seen summat as was not the tiger nor the leopard. Look out the window there, me lordship. Look out, look up. Look up.”

Where was bluff old Colonel Brennshnekkl, who had hunted leopard in Africa, thinking them more dangerous than lion or tiger which course the level ground along? Back in Africa, out of which, always something new. So Plautus says. Pliny?

Mrash again gestured to the window. “My lordship, look,” he said. Added, “There cross the alley, on the roof of old Baron Johan house. On the ridge o’ the roof, by the chimbley; look, sir.”

Eszterhazy looked; shielding with his hand against the obscuring reflection of the gaslight on the window glass, straining his eyes, wishing—not for the first time—that someone would invent a light, a quite bright light, which could (unlike the theatrical limelight) be cast up or across, across a distance. Well. Meanwhile. Meanwhile, something flapped in the wind, there on the rooftop, on the ridge by the chimney. “What, Mrashko? Some old clothes? Carried by wind—eh?”

“Nay, my lordship,” Mrash said. “Clothes, yes. Old or new. But I doubt the wind be that strong tonight to—No matter. That be a cloak and a full suit of clothes, sir, and I be a veteran of more nor one war and I’ll tell thee what, Master: inside the suit of clothes does a dead man lie.”

Mrash was hired to perform only the duties of a man-cook, but Mrash was no fool, he had indeed been in more than one war, nor had he spent all that time cloistered in the cook-tent; nor had his eyes been worn by much reading. His master said, “Sound the alarm.” In a moment the great iron ring rang out its clamor of ngoyng ngoyng mramha mram, ngoyng ngoyng mramha mram. In the very faint glim of the single small gaslamp at the alley’s far end men could be seen running, casting odd and oddly moving shadows. But what was on the rooftop cast no shadow. And it never moved at all.

By and by they came with the hooks and the ladders and the bull’s-eye lanterns and the grapples and the torches. They climbed up from inside the great old house across the alley and then they climbed up the steep-pitched roof. And Eszterhazy climbed with them. (Had he made this climb before? He had . . . hadn’t he?)

“Aye, he be dead. And have been. He’m stiff.” This from a volunteer fireman, a coal-porter by his sooty look. “See how wry his neck? He did fell and bruck it.” And:

“Am these claw marks!” asked another. Answering himself, “Nay, not here in The Town,” meaning Bella. “I expects he somehow tore himself when he fall . . . for fall to his dread death ’tis clear he did, may the Resurrected Jesus Christ and all the Saints have mercy on him and us. Aye. Man did fell . . .”

Dread death . . . Mercy . . .

The very-slightly-odd lordship who lived in the smaller and lower house which faced Turkling Street the other side of the alley, he shook his head. “If so, how came he here?” was his question, almost as though asking of himself. “Here—high above the street on the peak of a house with no higher one to fall from? Dead men fall down. They don’t fall up.”

It was so. There being no more to say to that, they brought the dead man down.

Old Helen, Baroness Johan’s old housekeeper-cook, served them the traditional hot rum-and-water. While they were sipping it: “Sir Doctor. Pardon, sir. The police want to know who ’tis. The late deceased. Can Sir Doctor—living ’cross the lane—tell them who ‘twas and what was doing there?”

Sir Doctor started to nod. What indeed? Had it all been a dream which he had earlier seen as he lay upon his bed? Or “a vision of the night”? Or—His mouth moved silently; then, “The deceased called himself ‘Melanchthon Mudge,’ ”he said. He took another swallow of the grog. It was very strong.

Just as well.

Just as well? Aye, well, add it up. That there were rings which were rings of power was a mere commonplace in the lore of legend. And what Dr. Eszterhazy knew about the lore of legend was more, even, than he knew about anything in which he had ever been granted a degree—though who would grant him a degree in it? The thumb-ring of Duke Pasquale (which Duke Pasquale? did it even matter?) was a very late entry into the lore of legend, and had come to Eszterhazy’s attention only yesterday, as it were. How had Melanchthon Mudge learned of it?—whoever “Melanchthon Mudge” really was? hunted down as though by a leopard and killed as though by a leopard and left high up aloft as though by a leopard. What had he done for the third Napoleon of France and the second Alexander of Russia and the first and last Amadeus of Spain, all men of subsequent ill-fate, that they should have given him (doubtless at his request) portions of the time-scattered Pasqualine jewels? Nothing very good, one might be sure. (Was it all adding up? Well, one would see. Get on with it. Go on. Go on.)

Was the power of Duke Pasquale’s ring that it gave one a capacity to turn for a while into an animal, a beast, a wild beast? Well could one imagine the glee of roaming wild and free of human form—Well. And once again he marveled at what must have been the long, long restraint (if this were all true) of the self-imagined Royal couple in never having made use of the Pasqualine ring. Never? “Never” was a longer word than its own two syllables; never? Surely neither of them, old King, old Queen, would ever (never) have used it for mere glee or mere power. Only an inescapable need for defense, for self-defense, the defense of Eszterhazy and the house of Count Cruttz and perhaps of that whole great city of Bella (. . . a leopard shall watch over thy cities . . .) against the great evil thing, the vengeful and killing thing which called itself Melanchthon Mudge, could have impelled them to make use of it. If this were all true: could this all be true? all of it? any of it?—for, if it was not, what was the other explanation? If there was another explanation.

Try as he might, as he added all this up, Eszterhazy could think of no other explanation.

A dozen frontiers were being “rectified.” A dozen boundaries were changing shape, none of them large enough to show upon a single map in an atlas; but, as to matters of straightening here and bending there, here a square mile and there some several kilometres: a dozen frontiers and boundaries were changing shape. And for every quid a quo, with dust being blown off a thousand parchment charters. In order to assure that a certain area in the Nigois Savoy be restored to its natural outlines, it was necessary to compensate . . . to, well, compensate two municipalities, one diocese, and . . . and what was this! to compensate the heirs of the fourth marriage-bed of the august Duke Pasquale IIII, in lieu of dower-rights, rights of conquest, rights of man, rights of women . . . rights.

What cared the historians and the cartographers? and for that matter, what cared the minor statesmen around this particular “green table,” for the right or plight of the heirs of the fourth marriage-bed, etc.? nothing. Save that if it were not taken care of, then neither could other boundaries and rights be taken care of, and a certain sand-bar in the Gambia would remain out of bounds and no-man’s-land, to vex the palm-oil and peanut-oil trade of certain citizens of certain Powers.

“So, you see, Doctor,” said Stowtfuss of the Foreign Office of the Triune Monarchy, “you were quite right in your suggestion and we passed it on and they passed it on; and, now, well, the King of the Single Sicily is still not really King of the Single Sicily and never will be . . . a good thing for Sicily, and a better thing for him. But now at least he can pretend his pretensions at a healthily higher standard of living. A tidy little income, that, from the old estate in the Nice-Savoy.”

Eszterhazy nodded. “And his wife needn’t scrub the floor on her aged knees,” he said. Old woman, old wife, old she-cat with claws. And with that one ring of power which wanton Mr. Mudge had so terribly wanted. That he, too, might have claws? And, turning, changing his spots—and more than alone his spots—use such claws in the night?

“Yes, yes,” said Stowtfuss, pityingly. “Yes, poor chaps, the poor old things. He and his old wife are cousins, you know. They are also related to . . . what’s the name? her maiden name? . . . a relation to the poet, same as the old man’s mother’s maiden name, to the poet Count Giacomo—ah yes! Leopardi! Leopardi! Count Giacomo Leopardi was their cousin. I suppose you may guess the animal in that coat of arms.”