The Church of Saint Satan and Pandaemons

The Church of Saint Satan and Pandaemons

Have you seen this, Englebert?” asked Judge Baltazaro Gumperts, tapping the newspaper— one of a dozen or two provided daily by the thoughtful proprietors of the Crown’s-head Coffee House.

“What is that—the Gazette?- haven’t seen it today.”

The jurist, with a sound half-snort and half-chuckle, said, “Did you know there is a woman newpaper editor in the American province of Far-vest?”

“I did not know, and am not surprised.”

“Incredible province.”

The judge sucked in coffee, shook his head.

“What about it?—and her?”

Judge Gumperts smacked the newspaper, perhaps as much to reprove it as to straighten it out for easier reading. “She says that the farmers there should raise less corn and more Hell; fact: just what it says: ‘Raise less corn and more Hell’—what do you think it means?''

Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy watched the waiter pour boiling milk

into his cup from one vessel and hot coffee into it from another, with simultaneous dexterity: half and half. “Why. ... I suspect that it is an invitation to the always-embattled farmers of America to devote fewer energies to the cultivation of maize in order that more emergies may be devoted politico-economic agitations.” He observed the milk forming a skin, nodded his satsifaction. The waiter withdrew. Ezsterhazy raised the glass, held it a moment as he followed a thought. “Something to do with railroad rates, I seem to recall. Our railroads are owned by The Crown, but as there is no Crown in America, the railroads there are owned by what are called investors. He bent his head and sipped.

Judge Gumperts said, “Ahaah!”

“What ‘ahaah!’ ”

And the member of the Court of the Second Jurisdiction said that this was perhaps why the American railroads sometimes imported quantitities of peasants from the Triune Monarchy. “Of the odder sort, too. Give them free land, and all. Which ones was it? Those odd chaps who wouldn’t vote or do military service, oh yes: Mennonites. They won’t make politio-economic agitations, I am sure. All kinds of different religions they have there in America, Engelbert. Fact. Read it in the Gazette. All privately-owned, too: like their railroads. All equal, too, you know. Fact. No State Church and no Concordats, you know. And women can be editors, too, it seems. Well, they can vote there, you know, in the Province of Far-vest.” Once more he sipped, licked his moustaches. "In-cred-ible,” he said.

On that same morning in the late Spring, Count Vladeck, the Minister of Cults to the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, was laying out a game of patience on his inlaid ebony desk, when a soft double-knock followed by an equally soft cough announced the presence of Brno, the Ministry’s Principal Secretary.

"Come in, Most Worthy Servant,” the Minister said, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. Brno, a stickler for ceremony in all its most antique forms, did not usually call upon his superior without having previously sent a note beginning Exceedingly August and High-born, and concluding, Kissing thus the , and so on. Count Vladeck, accordingly, did not merely look up from the Cards, he laid them down entirely.

Entered Brno, tall, thin, clad in black, pale as wax: the perfect civil servant, treading almost upon his toes. With lips compressed, he laid upon the Minister’s desk a document headed, in very large letters, and in the Gothic, Glagolitic, and Latin alphabets Permission for the Lawful Recognition of the Conventicle Hereunder Described. Count Vladeck did not exactly wince, he did not exactly make a mow, certainly he did not grind his teeth: but his teeth did indeed meet with a perceptible click. And Brno, with a certain air which combined satisfaction and gloom, said, “Exactly so, Exceedingly August and High-born Lord Minister and Count.”

If the conventicle (thereunder described) had been a congregation of the Holy Orthodox Church, no such permission need have been sought of the Ministry of Cults, suflh matters being purely the concern of the Met-, ropolitans of Pannonia and Scythia, and/or the Holy Synod of Transbal- kania. If it had been a Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic matter, the preliminary documentation would have been handled by the Papal Delegate, with the advice and consent of the Primus of Pannonia or the Ethnarch of Scythia or the Byzantine Exilarch of Balkania. And, inasmuch as Count Vladeck had received neither a preliminary visit from the Chief Rabbi nor a box of musk from the Grand Hodja, clearly no newly- planned synagogue or mosque was involved.

More—and on arriving at this point in his cogitations, the Minister of Cults sighed and reached for his snuffbox—More: if it were merely a matter of a new Lutheran or Reformed church congregation, not only would Brno not have come to consult with Count Vladeck, the Regional Secretaries of the Ministry would not have bothered bringing the matter to the attention of Brno.

All of which added up the prospect of another Evangelical Dissenting Group. And from that point on, there was really no knowing.

The last time this had occurred there were riots in Cisbalkania, the Byzantine delegates in the Diet had voted against the Budget, the Hyperboreans had refused to pay their head-tax, and the Papal Delegate, Monsignor Pinocchio, pleading severe indisposition, cancelled the twice- monthly sessions at which he and Count Vladeck (plus Field Marshal Dracula-Hunyadi apd Professor Plotz of the Medical Faculty) played poker—a game which Monsignor Pinocchio had learned as a parish priest in Bruklin, a provincial city on Great Island in the American Province of Nev-Jork.

All most disturbing, of course.

Count Vladeck took snuff rather gloomily.

“Which is it this timew Brno?” he asked, with a sigh and a snuffle. "The Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists? Or the Seventh Day An- tinomians?”

Brno pointed without words to the line reading, Name of the Conventicle for which Lawful Recognition is Sought, and upon which, in a neat and clear hand indicating nothing of any of the emotions which the copying clerk might have been supposed to have felt, was written The Church of St. Satan and Pandaemons.

It was Brno who broke the silence, although it was the Count who twitched convulsively. “The Petition,” he said, as softly as usual, “is signed by the requisite Nineteen Respectable and Loyal Subjects, all of whom were registered in the last Census, all of whom have paid head-tax for the previous five years, all of whom have performed military service, and none of whom have ever been placed under arrest. The requisite engrossing-fee has been paid, and in gold, and so has

the stamp-tax on the receipt for one year’s rent of the premises designated for worship.”

All, in short, was in order, perfectly in order. There was no lawful ground for the Minister of Cults to refuse his seal and signature. And, of course, if he were to apply them, the results .... the results—

“I shall resign,” he said, in a broken voice. “Resign—and take up my duties as Master of the Boarhounds in the remote border province of Ptush, as one is automatically obliged to do after resigning without having been requested to do so by The Throne. Resign . . . and give up my cosy little ten-room flat on the Corso, my so amiable plump mistress who sings coloratura soprano in the Opera, my electrical landau, my membership in the Jockey-Sport Club, and my English manservant ...” He thrust his knuckles into his mouth to prevent a sob escaping. It was impossible even to think of adequately heating a single room in Schloss Ptush, and the Minister was a martyr to chilblains.

Brno, to his superior’s infinite surprise, said, softly but firmly, “The Exceedingly August and High-born Lord Minister and Count must do no such thing.”

Hope was not yet to be thought of. But surprise alone checked the single tear which brimmed in one of Count Vladeck's eyes. “Then what must I do?” he whispered.

Said Brno: “You must consult Dr. Eszterhazy. ”

Engelbert Eszterhazy, Dr. Juris., Dr. Philos., Dr. Med., D. Litt., contemplated the cedar box before him. At length he opened it, extracted a panatela Caoba Granda, sniffed it, put it to his ear and (did things to it and listened. Next he cut an end off it with a small ivory-handled knife (a gift of the late Hajji Tippoo Tibb, of Zanzibar and Pemba). Next he put that end in his mouth and the other end in a small gas-flame. He took in a puff of smoke, did things with his mouth to it; at length allowed it to dribble slowly out; took another, longer puff and kept this one in for a longer time. Then he pursed his lips and, as though scarcely aware of what he was doing, blew a smoke ring. The ring floated through the air, and settled down over the single gloved finger which protruded from the hands clasped upon the gold-topped cane of his caller.

“This is a very good Habana,” he said. “This is a very difficult thing which you ask of me. You are in effect asking me to place an official im­primatur upon the rumors which even now already and for some years past have circulated among the more ignorant, videlicet, 'Eszterhazy trafficks with the Devil’. Why should I do so?”

Count Vladeck blinked and removed his gaze from a richly-colored porcelain phrenological head which gave the impression of floating in mid-air about five feet equidistant from floor and ceiling. “Patriotism,” he said, after a moment. And cleared his throat.

A faint movement which might have been a preliminary blink or an unfinished tic disturbed for a moment the corner of Dr. Eszterhazy’s left eye, and another thin film of cigar smoke ebbed from the left corner of his mouth. He said nothing.

“Not patriotism?” asked Count Vladeck.

“The most patriotic man I ever met,” Dr. Eszterhazy observed, “was Sergeant-Major Moomkotch, the mass-murderer. Remarkable head that man had. Remarkable. You remember

Moomkotch's head, of course.”

Perhaps a trifle nervously, perhaps a trifle crossly, Count Vladeck said, “No, I do not remember the head of Sergeant-Major Moomkotch!”

“Really?” his host said, with faint surprise. “Well, it is almost directly behind you, in a large vessel of formaldehyde.” Count Vladeck, issuing a sound perhaps reminiscent of a rather large bat during the rutting season, leaped from his chair and gave the impression of trying to move two ways at the same time. Then he sat down heavily, and cast a look of cold displeasure at the man who still calmly and with placid pleasure smoked the cigar given him. “Eszterhazy—”

“Yes, Vladeck?”

Their eyes met, locked.

After a moment: “Really,

Eszterhazy, you must not allow yourself to forget that you are addressing a Royal and Imperial Minister—”

“I do not for a moment forget it, nor do I expect that a Royal and Imperial Minister will find it unreasonable that when a man has been awarded seven doctorates he be addressed by at least one of them—”

But Count Vladeck could contain himself no further. With a sound no louder than an involunatry puff, he spun about in his chair. And exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” “No, no, no. Monosh Moomkitch, Sergeant-Major, First Pannonian Hussars (Star of Valor, 5th Class, Carpathian Campaign, With Bar). Convicted of seventeen counts of Infamous Murder. Went to the block singing the National Anthem. The Protuberance of Patriotism is very strong ... as your Excellency can see—” He gestured with his cigar.

“Looks like a wart, to me.”

Dr. Eszterhazy looked at his own hands, then at the back of the neatly-barbered and crisply-collared neck of his guest, moved all of his fingers once or twice, giving the impression of a spider about to spring: then sighed, very, very faintly.

“That is a wart, Your Excellency,” he said. “The Protuberance of Patriotism is approximately four and one half centimetres to the left oblique.” He placed both his hands in his pockets, and, leaning back in his chair once more, cocked up the cigar and watched the smoke.

“Very good Habana. ...”

At length Count Vladeck turned. “Depressing sight,” he murmured. “Yes, yes: I am sure it is also educational. Well. Enough of all this . . . this . . He avoided his host’s eye, then he met it.

“Well, well. Doctor Eszterhazv. Well enough. You know the nature of the problem. Will you take the case?” Another ring of cigar-smoke. Another. And another.

“Will you name your . . . your honorarium Doctor Eszterhazy? Doctor Doctor Eszterhazy? Doctor Doctor Doctor Eszterhasy? Doctor Doctor Doctor Doctor Eszterhazy? Doc—”

But the host waved away any further repetition. “Those will do. The other three are honorary. ‘Honorarium’? Yes. Well—” He sat up. All boredom, all mockery, all indifference, was now gone. He leaned forward.

The market-place in Poposhki- Georgiou smelled like a barn—that is, assuming a barn to have born, in addition to the usual odors of hay and dung and animals, a strong scent of ripe fruit, cheap perfume, kerosene, hot grease, fried meat, and fresh-baked pastry.

A rather unlikely combination for a barn, it must be admitted. But there you are. And here we are. In the market-place of Poposhki-Georgiou. Tuesday, since time immemorial (that is, for the past seventeen or eighteen years), has been Little Market Day. Great Market Day is Friday. Little Market Day is largely reserved for trading in mules, oxen, and he-goats; only the men come to Little Market Day. Little Market Day really smells like a barn—that is, a bam in which someone has been spilling a great deal of beer and and a great deal of the cheapest quality of distilled spirit (known in the local dialect as Maiden’s Breath). Few cooked or baked goods are offered on Tuesday, the men bringing their own lunch: and ‘lunch,’ to the peasantry of Poposki-Georgiou traditionally consists of a hunk of goat sausage, a hunk of goat cheese, a hunk of bread (not exactly black, more like grey), and a bunch of dried, sour cherries. Sour cherries are believed to be good for the lower intestine. In Poposki- Georgiou the lower intestine is regarded as the seat of the deeper emotions. “When my best mule broke his left foreleg,” one might hear it said, “it felt like a Turkish knife in my lower intestine.”

Also, they tell this story:

First Peasant: Yesterday I came home and found my wife in bed with the goat-herd-boy.

Second Peasant: What did you do?

First Peasant: I ate some sour cherries.

On hearing this story, particularly after the first half of the second bottle of Maiden’s Breath, your Poposhki- Georgiou peasant will clutch at his embroidered vest with both hands, wet his knee-b reeches, fall into spasms, and roll into dung-heaps.

But on Friday there comes to town not only the peasant, but the peasant's wife, the peasant’s daughters, the peasant's mother, and the peasant's mother-in-law. So things are somewhat different. In addition to the goodies afore-mentioned, there is a considerable trade in ribbons, whistles, preserved gingerbread, milch- goats, religious artifacts in gold, in pure gold, and in real gold; as well as a brisk traffic in herbs, some for love potions, some for laxatives.

Up to the herbalist’s stall falters an aged bobba-bobba in sixteen petticoats and twenty-seven shawls, all rusty black.

The Herbalist: What way may I serve the High-born Lady?

The Bobba-bobba: (Groans, putting both withered fists in the small of her back.) Something for the lower intestine?

The Herbalist: I have just the thing.

After that, up comes the bobba- bobba’ s great-granddaughter.

The Herbalist: What way may I serve the High-born and Beautiful Lady? Parle-voo Italino, Maddom?

The Girl: (Blushing) (In a whisper.) Something for the lower intestine?

The Herbalist: I have just the thing for you.

And then, by and by, up comes the girl's father.

Peasant: Say, ain't you new here? What become of Old Yockum, used to keep this pitch, hanh? (Hawks a phlegm and spits.)

The Herbalist: Yockum was gored by a boar in Hyperborea.

The Peasant: May the Resurrected Jesus Christ and All the Saints have mercy on his soul, goring was too good for him, the son of a bitch. Got something for the lower intestine?

Ah, the pawky peasantry of

Poposhki-Georgiou!

Meanwhile, and just to show that the Machine—symbolized by (a) the narrow-gage railroad from (and, for that matter, to) the District Capital, (b) the one-boiler engine in the local mill, which grinds grits and goat- fodder, and (c)—but there is no (c)— Just to show that here the Machine has not destroyed the Spirit of the Countryside, traditional music is being supplied by an old man on a one-drone bagpipe, a crippled boy who clashes cymbals which are not mates, and a drunken fat woman with a tambourine. The peasants show their keen appreciation for this old tradition by dancing traditional jigs, breaking wind what time the music pauses, and, when the crippled boy holds out his hand, giving him their bad coins or else spitting in his dirty paw.

And whenever this last piece of prime wit is performed, oh see the peasants—that is, see the other peasants—clutch at their embroidered vests with both hands, wet their knee-breeches, fall into spasms, and roll into dung heaps.

Also Traditional, although missing from the local scene for many years: a mountebank in a cherry-colored coat, blue trousers which fasten under his shoes, and an enormous and r.^cient grey top-hat—The old folks, when they catch sight of him, poke each other and say, “Ahaha, a Russian Jester! Now we’ll hear something good!” and they quicken their pace and crowd up close—the mountebank juggles three pomegranates, which he subsequently auctions off, keeps up a prolonged patter full of coarse jokes .... somehow the fruit turns into bundles of booklets, almanacs, which he procedes to hawk for a few groushek each. . . . "All the Days of the Saints, in Gothic, Glagolitic, and Latin, with the right Signs of the Moon and the time to plant turnips, plus many excerpts from the Sacred Psalms,”—and here he says something, with a pious look and a learned air, something which the peasants assume to be Old Sclavonic, or High Church Gothic; next he summons up a small boy and pulls a pigeon's egg out of his ear; anon there are suddenly two balls which he juggles, anon suddenly there is only one.

The “Russian Jester”: Funny, I had two when I started. (Slaps at himself).

And the peasants clutch their embroidered vests and—

Afterwards, the mountebank, off in a corner by himself, the unsold almanacs in his huge hat, a red kerchief spread out in his lap, is counting his pile of coppers. Most of the crowd is watching an unscheduled bit of entertainment, to wit a dog fight. This is at least as much fun as anything else, and has the added advantage that no one will try to take up a collection afterward.

“Greetings, purest one,” someone says to the juggler. The juggler looks up slowly, one hand upon the coppers, says not a word.

The newcomer is a yellow-faced man, a man with a hairless face, deeply grooved; he wears the costume of a tchilditz, an itinerate sow-spayer.

“Greetings, purest one,” he repeats.

The mountebank smiles the faintest of smiles. “Say,” he says, “you look a sight purer than I am.”

The tchilditz nods. “I am a white dove,” he says, “received the removal of freshly cares when I was a boy. Wasn’t any law against it, then. —But you, no, you are a purest one. You know the Old Tongue. I heard you say it, back then, when you’s talking about their false Psalms, yes I did.

Didn’t I.” The two give swift glances around, their hands meet, are covered by the red kerchief. Does the kerchief move in the wind? Do their fingers move beneath the kerchief?— fingers touching fingers in some ritual play? It is all over in a moment.

“There are more of us around now than there used to be, aren’t there?” the “Russian Jester” says.

The white dove nods head, strokes his long chin. “Yes, more. More. Not many. Never many. Nowhere many. Not since olden times. But all this is going to change. Soon. Changes be starting. You know?”

The jester shrugs, waggles his hands, cups an ear. ‘’I hear. I just . . . hear. But I don’t really know.”

The tchilditz (his name, he says, is Jaaneck) comes closer and brings his mouth close to the mountebank’s ear. Then he seems to think better of it. “Look here, what I be going to show you . . . thee ... So look here. Look down here. Look—” And with his long stave he begins to draw something. Something like a map. “—and I’ll see thee, then, tonight,” he concludes. And starts away.

“Come brother, only two groushek, only two for this here almanac,” the mountebank calls after him, holding one up, as if still trying to make a sale. There are faint smiles on both faces.

It is a feature of the Triune Monarchy that indeed, it is of its essence, his Most Serene and Apostolic Majesty, Ignats Louis, is simultaneously King of Pannonia, Emperor of Scythia, and Basha of Transbalkania. However. As Engelbert Eszterhazy himself so often said, “Things are not simple.” Nor are they. Transbalkania is itself a Confoedorats, consisting in Vlox-Minore, Vlox-Majore, Popushki, and Hyperborea. H.M.S.A.M. Ignats Louis, as every school-child knows, is thus High Duke of the Two Vlox, Prince of Popushki, and Grand Hetman of Hyperborea: Pop. (1901) 132, 756. Principal exports: Sheepskins, hoars’- bristles, dried artichokes, eisenglass, and musk.Capital: (formerly Apolloopolis).

Apollograd is thus the smallest National Capital of the Triune Monarchy. Dr. Einhardt, the statistician, has calculated, in one of his rare droll moments, that it takes anything new an average of 17.5 years to move the 700-odd miles between Bella, the Imperial Capital, and Apollograd. (“That is,” he adds, with the familiar twinkle in his kindly, myopic eyes, “when it moves at all!”) Even now, one may see a group of boar-herds crossing themselves in awe at sight of “the samovar on wheels, as they call the Apollograd steam-tram; as it happens, the last steam-tram in Bella was discontinued over seventeen years ago. Provincial nobility still find it necessary to warn their servants on no account to blow out the gas-lights in the Grand Hotel Apollo and Ignats Louis. Even in the Saxon and the Armenian Quarters the majority of homes are illuminated by kerosene lamps, while most of the Tartars use rush-lights. The rubble-strewn streets of this last sector, formerly a by-word, are now, under the benevolently stern and progressive administration of the Governor of the City, Count Blopz, entirely a thing of the past.

The gas-mains have as yet to reach most of the streets in the older parts of town. Street lamps burning colza oil were tried by Count Blopz, on an experimental basis, early in his term of office; but it was found that the Tartars used to drain the oil and use

it for cooking purposes. Visitors may, on payment of a small fee, obtain the service of a municipally-licensed porter with a lamp.

“I ain't seen you here before Brother,” the porter Karposh commented one night, in the dipping and bobbing lamplight.

“Things in the bristle business are not what they were,” his hire said, gloomily. “One must get closer to sources of supply.” He might have been considered tall, had he not stooped so much. Perhaps conditions in the bristle business were weighing him down,

“That’s what they tell me, Brother. Say, Brother, how about a drop of brandy before we get deep into Tartar Town?—No brandy there, you know, being all Musselmens,” and he spat, pro forma, in the rutted, pitted road.

The traveller muttered something about the brandy not evaporating before they got back; and with this hint of future kindness Karp osh had to pretend contentment. The houses huddled far back from the way, thatched-roofed and low-set. Now and again a dog, chained by a melon- patch, lifted its snouzle and bayed at the lemon-rind moon. And at length they came to their destination.

“See this here warehouse, Brother?” the guide asked, lifting the lamp as though to show to better advantage the peeling plaster and the rubble- and-stone walls beneath. “Used to be a what they call a caravanserai in the old days of the Turks. Camels they had here in them days. Fact! My old grand-dad he told— ’

But perhaps what was told by Karposh grandpere may never be known to any other living soul, for at that moment the small door set into the big door opened, the traveller spoke a few words into the opening, the door opened a bit more, the traveller entered, the door creaked shut. Karposh grunted, set the lamp into a niche, lowered the wick, lowered himself to the turf, and, thinking of brandy, prepared to wait.

Many, many camels indeed could have been accomodated during the great days of the caravanserai; one thinks of them, Bactrians for the most part, wool peeling off in great patches, necklaces of big blue beads round their thick, crook necks, padding and bobbing and pressing on, league after hundred league, all the way from the Court of the Great Khan at Karakorum—perhaps—and even, perhaps, further. There were courtyards within courtyards, and warehouses which might have lodged the bristles of all the boars of Hyper- borea: and bales more precious than that such, by far: galingale and ben- join, reels of silk, Indoo veilery thin as mist: but now nought but a few bare halls containing hair from the stinking swine of the Hyperborean ranges, destined to make paintbrushes for to whitewash the walls of Christendom.

The doorkeeper had a torch.

At each corner of each rectangle within the great serai, another with a torch.

Within a chamber that large its hither parts were only a lostness of shadows, two lines of men standing an arm s span apart, and each of them with a torch.

A Voice: This will be the last. None more may enter now.

The last passed down between the rows of torch-bearers and the torch- bearers fell into step behind him.

The gathering was not very large, and neither was the inner room. At one end was a table with the embroidered table-cloth one saw on high occasions in the kitchens of prosperous farmhouses, and a modern oil-lamp sat on it, frosted chimney semicovered with a bright pink globe. Three respectable men with side- whiskers sat at the table, and one was rendered twice-respectable by reason of his wearing eye-glasses with rather small, oval lenses. A stout woman all in black sat at a small harmonium; if she herself was not the widow of a prosperous butcher, surely she had a sister who was. Esterhazy sat as near the back of the fairly small congregation as was possible for him to do, the diaconal-looking man in spectacles nodded to the woman, she threw back her ample shoulders and began to play, with fairly few false notes, what one would automatically assume to be a hymn: but which Eszterhazy after a moment recognized as the Grand March from Alda.

She did not play much of it.

The harmonium subsided on a sort of sigh, the deacon arose, took a handkerchief from his sleeve, and, in a voice heavy with emotion said, “Beloved brethren, dear saints who have kept The Faith, I have come to deliver unto you the joyful and so-long- awaited tidings: Saint Satan has at last been released from Hell, and, with all his Holy Demons, even now begins to prepare for his rule over all the Heavens and over all the earth. . . .”

The congregation burst into sobs, shouts, cries of ecstasy, throwing out their arms, clasping their hands, beating their bosoms, doubling forward in their seats, and, in a moment, first one by one, then by twos, then three and four at a time, leaping to their feet. A white-haired man in worn broadcloth, with the look and smell of a backwoods apothecary, turned to Eszterhazy and, with tears running down his furrowed face, embraced him and cried out, “Satan is risen! Satan is risen/”

And Eszterhazy, somewhat returning the embrace, said in the tones nearest to enthusiasm which at the moment he felt capable of, “Has he risen indeed?”

Not the least of the interesting features of the Pannonian Presbyterian Church is that it sustains seventeen bishops, of whom fifteen are in Pannonia proper, and two—in par- tibus infidelibus, as it were—preside over the Synods of Scythia and Trans- balkania. Sceptical Calvinists have been known to come all the way from Scotland (especially from Scotland) to check upon this; and to them the learned divines of the Reformed Faith explain that, Firstly, the institution was in a sense forced upon them by the Capitulations of 1593, that, Secondly, the bishops are chosen by lot and after fasting, meditation, and prayer, and without any hint of an Apostolic Succession, the bishop being in his synod merely First Among Equals among the other Calvinist clergy, and that, Thirdly—

But these visitors rarely desire to hear of Thirdly. They say, “Hoot!” and, “Wheesht!” they exclaim. And, “Beeshops, did ye say!” they murmur, casting up their eyes and hands.

Bishop Andreas Hugyvod walked up and down in his garden in the precincts of the Great Old Reformed Church in Apollograd. He was a man of enormous girth and staure, in a Geneva gown, a huge starched ruff, and a tricorn hat; and gave the impression of being a sort of catafalque stood on one end and moving under its own locomotion. In one hand he held, almost, indeed, engulfing, volume xxii of the octavo edition of Calvin’s Institutes; with a tiny agate snufibox pressed against the morocco binding; the other hand, or, at any rate, two fingers of it, were pressed to his nose. There was, let us say, a certain nobility to the bishop’s nose. A certain grandness, an amplitude of architecture, rococco ... or, perhaps, baroque. A painter, engaged by a committee of the Presbytery to fix the bishop’s likeness in oils, had once, and only once, and most unwisely, declared the nose to be “Roman.” So unchristian an emotion as wrath would certainly not have disfigured the episcopal countenance; however, he let it be known that he did not agree. And let us, therefore, leave it so. The nose of the Calvinist Bishop of Apollograd and all Transbalkania was not Roman. And, certainly, it was not Roman Catholic.

Walking to and from in his garden, meditating doubtless, upon the doctrines of Election, Predestination, and Total Depravity, he gazed with an unwinking solemnity at the approaching visitor. The vistor was tall, and walked in a somewhat stately manner, one hand clasped behind him in the small of his back. His frock coat was spotless, in itself somewhat unusual in Apollograd, which the bishop himself had more than once humorously referred to as “Apollograd the Dusty.” And, when he removed his equally spotless silk hat and bowed, he revealed an imposing head, whose silvery hair had receded just sufficiently to remind one of Gogol’s comment, in another context, “Forasmuch as he is wise, God hath added unto his brow.” The visitor’s head bulged appreciably on both sides, indicating that his hatter, at least, must certainly and most certainly have been aware of the ususual quality and quantity of brain matter beneath and behind the frontal and occipital bones.

The bishop, experienced in judging physiognomy and other matters indicative of profession, allowed the hand

at his nose to fall awav, and the snuff to dissipate in the wind (and, if not, to be joined to other dust motes of the National Capital, where, as has been hinted, thev would scarcelv be noticed), transferred book and box to

that hand, and held the newly-unencumbered one out to the visitor, remarking as he did so, “ Sir Advocate . ”

“Engelbert Eszterhazy, of the Faculty of Law, and for to serve Your Reverence. —But how—how did Your Reverence know?”

His Reverence waved the matter aside. “One knows,” he rumbled. “One knows.” He gave the visitor s hand another squeeze. “Well. Doctor Eszterhazy. So. Well. From Bella? Of course. From Bella. You see. One knows ” He gave a slight shrug.

Merely a provincial bishop he might be, the shrug said, but he was well aware of a thing /or two, videlicet that, firstly, the visitor was an Advo­cate at Law, Secondly, that as such he bore the title of Dr. Juris., and that, Thirdly, such a smart get-up was just the sort of smart get-ups worn by and worn only by members of the Society of Advocates in the Imperial Capital, but that, and after all, Fourthly, it was thus no use trying to humbug the bishop and maybe try to cozen him out of any of his First Fruits, Tithes, Annates, and/or other presbytiral perquisites: no use to try.

“Well, well, Your Reverence is of course quite correct. I have not come here to buy bristles!”

“Ho ho!” the bishop rumbled. “Ahahah. Bristles! Ha! That’s good. That’s a rich one. Bristles, no. But as for, ah, hum, musk?” He raised his eyebrows, twisted his mouth. “Concerning this the humble shepherd had better not ask; therefor he .won’t.

Hor

Eszterhazy’s manner, as he gave his head a slight shake, indicated that he was all too well aware of the reputation, in matters of amour, of the Fa­culty of Law. He said nothing of the fact that it had been decades since musk had been regarded as a proper gift by the higher-priced courtesans of the Imperial Capital. ,

“What shall I say to my excellent and reverend aqaintance, Pastor Ec- kelhofft, on your behalf, Bishop, when I return?”

“Eckelhofft, ah, Eckelhofft!” The bishop had deftly hiked up his gown and stuck the snuffbox in one pocket and the little book in another. He now raised both hands, palms out, and his eyes as well. “There is a soul for you! There is a mind! Smart? Smarter than six Jesuits! Christian souls in doubt and danger,” he apostrophized them from his garden, with the rose-bushes and the linden trees as witnesses, “such as are subject to hazards innumerable, temptations and licentious doctrines being ever found in the great cities above all places under the sun: have no fear! Sebastian Eckelhofft stands like a beacon-light! Hearken unto him, dwellers in the great imperial high-city! Sit at his feet on the Lord’s day! Eschew Lutheranism in all its forms, not to speak of even worse errors—”

The jurisconsult rubbed his long nose as though appreciative of these admonitions. “Quite a scholar, Pastor Eckelhofft,” he said.

“None better. Cicero at his fingertips, Erasmus in the hollow of his hand. —I was once a bit of a scholar myself,” the bishop said, a touch wistfully. 'Though little enough one finds for learning here, amidst the heathen hordes of Hyperborea.”

“ ‘Heathen' ah yes. Your Reverence refers to the Tartars?”

His Reverence was not so sure. Tartars, he said, Tartars were but simple souls, honest and hardworking, deceived by a false and so- called prophet, true. But there was worse than Tartarism by far to be found in Hyperborea. A Tartar after all was a mere shadow of a Turk, and the Turks, bestial devotees of Lust in all its forms, still, even the Turks had recognized in the Reformed Faith a Faith free from idolotry in all its forms . . .

“There are those here worse than Tartars by far,” he repeated darkly.

The visitor seemed both troubled and fascinated. “I would not dream of contradicting the immense wealth of knowledge and experience,” he said, “on which Your Reverence must base his statements. No doubt it was to th ese historical events which Pastor Ecklehofft referred once or twice when we were discussing—he and I—the surprising hold which the Manichean heresies used to hold, so long ago, upon so many of the inhabitants of this once-flourishing (I refer to pre-Turkish times) district . . . eh?”

But the Bishop of Apollograd did not seem inclined to assent to the eh? “Historical events? Long ago? Used to hold? Used to hold? Pre-Turkish times? Ha Ha!"

Why—surely Bishop Hogyvod did not mean to imply that—?

Bishop Hogyvod did mean to imply. That.

Had Doctor Eszterhazy ever been in Poposhld-Georgiou.

Doctor Eszterhazy touched his own long nose thoughtfully. Yes, he had.

Did Dr. Esterhazy know the famous cheeses of Poposki-Georgiou? Doctor Eszterhazy did; so. And then he must know the method in which those cheeses were ripened. By being carefully wrapped in a clean pig s- bladder, and then wrapped inside of seven sacks, and then buried beneath a dung-heap for two months. “Is it two months?” he pondred. “Well, no matter, two months or—or whatever. The dung-heap, foul though it is, produces an even and continuous heat; a fact pointed out and utilized by the old alchemists. Though maybe not to make cheese. Nevermind. Nevertheless. You put the green cheese under the dung-heap, and, if you wait long enough, what do you get? Ripe cheese. Over-ripe, to my own way of thinking; blood of a she- wolf, how they stink! So now you understand.” He gave his head a portentous nod, and stamped one of his huge feet on the herb-bordered flagstones of the garden path.

Evidently it took a moment for the visitor to clear his throat and pluck up courage to admit that he did not—

“What! Not understand? What, not” The back door of the Bishop s Seat opened and an elderly but spry woman came out, smoothing her apron. “What is there not to understand? You take the green cheese, that is to say, the Manichean or Dualist heresy, the damnable doctrine of the so-called Cathari, or Pure ones, the abominable teachings and practices of the Bulgarian Daemonoloters—you take this and you bury it beneath the dung-heap: that is, obviously, the long, long rule of the Orthodox, the Romanist Catholic, and the Turk: centuries of hiding beneath the surface of the world, like the worms they are, like the serpents which they be. And what do you get? Why what would you get, man? You would get stinking cheese, wouldn't you —Or, in other words, Christian Diabolism. What else?”

The old woman came up and courtsied in the high, antique style. “Good early evening, Sir Bishop, Cook says dinner is ready, and will the gentleman be staying—?”

The bishop’s scowl, at the mention of the word Dinner, vanished like ice in a hot samovar. “Of course the gentleman will be staying, Mrs. Umlaut, do you take him for a fool, why should he eat those greasy kickshaws at the Grand Hotel when he can eat here?”

The gentleman murmured something about Regretting, and indeed tugged at a watch; but the bishop waved the watch back into its pocket. “What? Not eat here? Not have dinner at Apollograd Bishop's Seat? Not have not have ” Here his erudite nose went up a few inches, the nostrils dilated and gave an educated snif . . or two . . . “Not have cock-and-pullet soup with sour cream fresh dill Bosnian prunes? Not have grilled squabs farced with pounded chicken livers and shallots? Not have sweet and sour red cabbage and caraway seeds? Roast breast of heifer with crisp cracklings potato dumplings and sour krout fresh home-made noodles and pot cheese plum brandy fresh- roasted coffee with fresh-ground cinnamon apple-strudel-walnuts-rasins?

What?”

Doctor Eszterhazy sighed. “Ah, Your Reverence has a certain way of putting things.”

His Reverence said, “Ho Ho/” and, putting his hand between his guest s shoulder-blades, gave him a a friendly shove which might have staggered someone less sure on his feet. “Yes,” said the bishop, “Christ-ian Diab-o-

lism, . . . And would you believe, no: the flesh-pots of Egypt (that is to say: Bella) you know, but of this particular canker-sore you know nothing and would not believe. But we know and we believe! Yes! These scoundrels are stirring after their insufficiently-long slumber and sleep. Yes, these rogues are actually whispering about coming out into the open! Well, let them try! Tolerant we may be, but even Tolerance has its limits, and, after all, we are not the descendants of mice or of sheep, let me tell you a tale or two of that godly man, Duke Vladimir the Impaler, rrrrrrr/”

But by this time they had washed their hands and it was time for the bishop to say grace.

The Bureau of the Royal and Imperial Posts and Mails (Division of Semaphores and Telegraphs) had closed for the night, but opened as a courtesy to the Faculties of Law, Letters, and Medicine; plus a small gratuity. .

“You have no objection to the use of American standard commercial code?” asked Eszterhazy.

“Doctor,” the Royal and Imperial Telegrapher said, as he sat down at the instrument, “for another such amount, you may, if you please, send the entire corpus of the Legends of The Saints—in Glagolitic.”

But Eszterhazy said he thought that the rather briefer message which he had prepared would do. At that moment the incoming set burst into a clatter.

“'Most Important,'” the clerk translated, and, brightening, suggested that it was the results of the football tournament holden that afternoon in Bella: but no.

“ ‘Bulgaria has invaded Turkey,' " Esterhazy interpreted.

” ‘Most important!'” the telegrapher shrugged sarcastically, and, clearing his throat, began to tap the outgoing message.

That night the congregation of the illicit conventicle in Tartar Town was larger by several dozen. “Beloved brethren,” the deacon began, “the glad tidings have begun to spread. It is our duty to help spread them, indeed. It is also, as always, our duty to accept martyrdom, and I am sure that oppression is as inevitable as—this time—it is bound to be transitory. For is not our local saying true, that ‘We are in debt to the landlords’ handerchiefs for the very sweat of our brows’ as true as ever? Which of us indeed owns the fields he tills, the shops wherein he toils? Scarcely a one. If the monks, bishops, and archimandrites do not own the fabric of our livelihood, then some nobleman does. It is in their evil interests to defy Holy Saint Satan and to wage war upon his saints, but”

His voice stopped upon the interval for breath and in the shaveling of a second his voice, like that of everyone present, rose and fell upon a deep sound ofO, which prolonged itself.

To his left, and in what had been until that second the darkness and dimness of the corner of the room- top, there appeared a head and face. In appearance it reminded one of the portrait in the Royal Imperial Art Museum in Bella, entitled The Boyar Bogdanovich, After A Long Resistance to the Vlox, Being Led Away to Impalement On His Castle Walls—the same air of ruined grandeur and defiant nobility—but it was more than twice the size of any merely human head or face; and tears of blood coursed from the glowing yellow eyes and fell silently into the darkness. The congregation fell with one accord upon their knees; and the lips opened and began to speak.

“Children of Light, falsely called ‘of Darkness” the head spoke, in tones sonorous and echoing, ‘ way which you intend is not the way. not .... not .... the .... the .... way .... way ....

The deacon broke the numinous silence. “O Blessed Saint Satan.” he asked, imploringly, “what is the way?”

The lips writhed as though in anguish, the golden and glowing eyes rolled; at length the voice said, “I shall send you a messenger and the token shall be the verse of the former scriptures about the land spread forth as though on wings….”

And as the last words still throbbed in the ears, the vision and the visage began to fade, and again the congregational voice rose and fell and prolonged itself upon a deep sound of O.

T'he cheat Central Platform of the railroad terminal in Avar-Ister, capital of Pannonia, is seldom uncrowded. Here arrive and here depart the great expresses to and from Bella, almost their last stop this side of Constantinople, many of the fashionable travellers getting down to stretch their legs during the half-hour pause, to walk up and down, and buy the famous roses and the famous sweetmeats of the Co-Capital (as it is called, often, in Avar-Ister, and, seldom, in Bella). Here one changes for all the branch-lines which connect the second city of the Triune Monarchy with all places east and south (including Apollograd). Here one sees Yanosh, the once famous Gypsy dancer—that is, still famous, but no longer a dancer; not since losing two of his toes as the result of a bite inflicted during a lovers’ quarrel by a jealous mistress—and his by now almost equally-famous dancing she-bear, Yanoshka. There is a saying to the effect that “Whoever sits upon the middle bench of the great Central Platform of the railroad terminal in Avar-Ister, if he sits long enough, will see pass in front of him everyone whom he knows;” at least, there is a saying to that effect in Avar- Ister . . . sometimes called “the Paris of the Balkans.”

Sometimes.

At the moment (the moment being midnight) it was difficult to see just who was sitting on the middle bench, for a crowd of travellers was milling around watching Yanosh beat his Gypsy tambourine, shouting hoarsely, as Yanoshka, head up, shuffled up and down upon the soles of her huge feet.

A thin gentleman in a high, starched collar with rounded ends looked around uncertainly. At that moment « someone rose from the middle bench and approached him.

“Mr. Abernathy?”

The thin gentleman removed a finger from its place between his collar and his neck, adjusted his eyeglasses, and said. “Sir, I am Silas Abernathy, sole Representative in Scythia-Pannonia-Transblakania of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southwestern Nebraska Railroad; might you be Doctor Eszterhazy? You are! Well, say, I want to thank you for your wire, and —say, are you a doctor of medicine, a doctor of philosophy, or a doctor of jurisprudence?”

“Yes,” said Eszterhazy.

Mr. Abernathy blinked, gave an uncertain chuckle, then plunged ahead. “Say, I don’t know how you learned that those ten townships alongside our right-of-way have finally come out of litigation, but you are one hundred percent right that the a,p, and sn line desires to settle them with You-roe-pene settlers of an industrious nature. The soil is deep, sir, the soil is fer-tyle, it can grow corn (maize, as you call it), it can grow pertaters, it can grow winter wheat, and the a,p, and SN line is not only willing to sell it to the right parties for nothing down and three dollars a acre over twenty-five years, but we are also willing and eager to pay all of their moving and travelling expenses for their persons and baggage. Say, they can be their own landlords in no time flat, with a good crop er two, and they can also enjoy freedom of the press if they are of a literary pursuit in their spar time, as well as freedom of speech, needless to add mention of freedom of rulligion—”

“Needless,” said Eszterhazy. “And, pray, do not forget to mention, when you speak to their leader, Deacon Philostr Grotz, that according to may exegetes and scholars, North and South America, in the singular shape of the conjoined continents, may have been mentioned in the Old Testament as ‘the land spread forth as though on wings—”

“Say” said Mr. Abernathy, “that’s right. No, I sure wont forget. They’ll be good customers for our line, Doctor, we prefer above all other types of settlers your You-roe-pene settler of a deeply rulligious nature. Say, we certainly must have you over for Sunday morning breakfast sometime in Bella, Mr. Abernathy, she makes waffles, sir, she makes pancakes—”

Eszterhazy with a look of apology having received consent, raised his right index finger and touched a part of Abernathy’s skull. “You are of a greatly philoprogentitive nature, I see.”

“Well sir (say, it is almost time for my train) well sir, the Mrs and I are both children of the great and fer-tyle prairies (the steppies, as you call um), and I don’t hesitate to say that we have five little ones of whom I am, yes, very fond, with promise of a sixth one in nothing flat, that is, in about five weeks three days, give er take a day er two. Say, are those gongs them guards are beating? Say, I really must go now. Say, I'll be sure to give your regards to Apollograd. Say, I sure do think—"

In the brief lull following the departure of the Hyperborean Hawk, Yanosh could be heard laboriously counting his take, and then commenting on it, as follows: “They call this alms? Blood of a vixen! May they catch the cholera! Alms, they call this? May an aurochs gore them!" The curses of Yanosh were famous, and known to be as vivid as they were archaic.

At first sight of him, the bull plunged into a wooded declivity and was lost for the rest of the morning. “Plunged" is perhaps too swift a word. It lumbered. About midafternoon he was able to obtain brief and broken glimpses with his binoculars. About mid-morning of the second day, it came slowly up and out of the declivity, and began to graze. And by the third morning it came up to him, very, very shyly, and accepted a lump of salt.

It was a bull, and an old bull, a very old bull indeed; and it was huge, even though its head with the huge and vast-spread horns seldom raised up even to shoulder-level. And it smelled, Lord God how it smelled!

When the old Warden shambled

over, a little before noon, it merely acknowledged him with a glance and a flick of the tail. "I take the liberty, High-born Sir and Noble Doctor, of bringing you some lunch, same as yesterday,” said the old Warden. “Since you was so good as to accept of it yesterday and the day before. Today being your last day," he said, with respectful and sympathetic firmness. “Three days being the term stated in your honorable pass."

“Yes, yes,” said Eszterhazy. “Thank you very much indeed. No need to worry. I’ll leave at sundown. I fully appreciate the privilege." The great and ancient beast nuzzled his hand, and was rewarded with some thinly- shaven slices of apple.

“That’s a old beast, sir," said the Warden. “It’s most thirty year old. There was a half-a-dozen when first I come here, but, somehow, they others all died off. Don’t know if there is another anywhere, I don't.”

“There isn’t,” said Eszterhazy. He never took his eyes off it.

The old man breathed noisily for a few minutes. Then he nodded. “The only other visitor ever allowed," he said, “was the King of Illyria. Didn’t stay long, on finding our Sovereign Lord the King-Emperor wasn’t going to let him shoot at it; fancy! —Ah— now it’s come to me. What it’s called. ‘Old Methusaleh,’ of course, that’s only our name Tor it. The kind of animal it is, he said, is a aurochs.

Eszterhazy never took his eyes from it. “Yes," he said, after a moment; “I know.”