so manuel and niafer came unhurt to the top of the gray mountain called vraidex, and to the doubtful palace of miramon lluagor. gongs, slowly struck, were sounding as if in languid dispute among themselves, when the two lads came across a small level plain where grass was interspersed with white clover. here and there stood wicked looking dwarf trees with violet and yellow foliage. the doubtful palace before the circumspectly advancing boys appeared to be constructed of black and gold lacquer, and it was decorated with the figures of butterflies and tortoises and swans.

this day being a thursday, manuel and niafer entered unchallenged through gates of horn and ivory; and came into a red corridor in which five gray beasts, like large hairless cats, were casting dice. these animals grinned, and licked their lips, as the boys passed deeper into the doubtful palace.

in the centre of the palace miramon had set like a tower one of the tusks of behemoth: the tusk was hollowed out into five large rooms, and in the inmost room, under a canopy with green tassels, they found the magician.

"come forth, and die now, miramon lluagor!" shouts manuel, brandishing his sword, for which, at last, employment was promised here.

the magician drew closer about him his old threadbare dressing-gown, and he desisted from his enchantments, and he put aside a small unfinished design, which scuttled into the fireplace, whimpering. and manuel perceived that the dreadful prince of the seven madnesses had the appearance of the mild-mannered stranger who had given manuel the charmed sword.

"ah, yes, it was good of you to come so soon," says miramon lluagor, rearing back his head, and narrowing his gentle and sombre eyes, as the magician looked at them down the sides of what little nose he had. "yes, and your young friend, too, is very welcome. but you boys must be quite worn out, after toiling up this mountain, so do you sit down and have a cup of wine before i surrender my dear wife."

says manuel, sternly, "but what is the meaning of all this?"

"the meaning and the upshot, clearly," replied the magician, "is that, since you have the charmed sword flamberge, and since the wearer of flamberge is irresistible, it would be nonsense for me to oppose you."

"but, miramon, it was you who gave me the sword!"

miramon rubbed his droll little nose for a while, before speaking. "and how else was i to get conquered? for, i must tell you, manuel, it is a law of the léshy that a magician cannot surrender his prey unless the magician be conquered. i must tell you, too, that when i carried off gisèle i acted, as i by and by discovered, rather injudiciously."

"now, by holy paul and pollux! i do not understand this at all, miramon."

"why, manuel, you must know she was a very charming girl, and in appearance just the type that i had always fancied for a wife. but perhaps it is not wise to be guided entirely by appearances. for i find now that she has a strong will in her white bosom, and a tireless tongue in her glittering head, and i do not equally admire all four of these possessions."

"still, miramon, if only a few months back your love was so great as to lead you into abducting her—"

the prince of the seven madnesses said gravely:

"love, as i think, is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance. they that aspire to possess love utterly, fall into folly. this is forbidden: you cannot. the lover, beholding that fusing move as a golden-hued goddess, accessible, kindly and priceless, wooes and ill-fatedly wins all the substance. the golden-hued shadow dims in the dawn of his married life, dulled with content, and the shadow vanishes. so there remains, for the puzzled husband's embracing, flesh which is fair and dear, no doubt, yet is flesh such as his; and talking and talking and talking; and kisses in all ways desirable. love, of a sort, too remains, but hardly the love that was yesterday's."

now the unfinished design came out of the fireplace, and climbed up miramon's leg, still faintly whimpering. he looked at it meditatively, then twisted off the creature's head and dropped the fragments into his waste-basket.

miramon sighed. he said:

"this is the cry of all husbands that now are or may be hereafter,—'what has become of the girl that i married? and how should i rightly deal with this woman whom somehow time has involved in my doings? love, of a sort, now i have for her, but not the love that was yesterday's—'"

while miramon spoke thus, the two lads were looking at each other blankly: for they were young, and their understanding of this matter was as yet withheld.

then said miramon:

"yes, he is wiser that shelters his longing from any such surfeit. yes, he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the substance, wisely regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow which, if you grasp at it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will follow, gilding all life with its glory, and keeping always one woman young and most fair and most wise, and unwon; and keeping you always never contented, but armed with a self-respect that no husband manages quite to retain in the face of being contented. no, for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and substance, fused for that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest pleasure from either alone, but hardly from these two united."

"well," manuel conceded, "all this may be true; but i never quite understood hexameters, and so i could not ever see the good of talking in them."

"i always do that, manuel, when i am deeply affected. it is, i suppose, the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment that inhibitions are removed, for when i think about the impending severance from my dear wife i more or less lose control of myself—you see, she takes an active interest in my work, and that does not do with a creative artist in any line. oh, dear me, no, not for a moment!" says miramon, forlornly.

"but how can that be?" niafer asked him.

"as all persons know, i design the dreams of men. now gisèle asserts that people have enough trouble in real life, without having to go to sleep to look for it—"

"certainly that is true," says niafer.

"so she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and edifying dreams and glad dreams. she says you must give tired persons what they most need; and is emphatic about the importance of everybody's sleeping in a wholesome atmosphere. so i have not been permitted to design a fine nightmare or a creditable terror—nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no sea-serpents or krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a really free hand,—for months and months: and my art suffers. then, as for other dreams, of a more roguish nature—"

"what sort of dreams can you be talking about, i wonder, miramon?"

the magician described what he meant. "such dreams also she has quite forbidden," he added, with a sigh.

"i see," said manuel: "and now i think of it, it is true that i have not had a dream of that sort for quite a while."

"no man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. and here again my art suffers, for my designs in this line were always especially vivid and effective, and pleased the most rigid. then, too, gisèle is always doing and telling me things for my own good—in fine, my lads, my wife takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my clutches," said miramon, fretfully.

"it is difficult to explain to you, manuel, just now, but after you have been married to gisèle for a while you will comprehend without any explaining."

"now, miramon, i marvel to see a great magician controlled by a woman who is in his power, and who can, after all, do nothing but talk."

miramon for some while considered manuel, rather helplessly. "unmarried men do wonder about that," said miramon. "at all events, i will summon her, and you can explain how you have conquered me, and then you can take her away and marry her yourself, and heaven help you!"

"but shall i explain that it was you who gave me the resistless sword?"

"no, manuel: no, you should be candid within more rational limits. for you are now a famous champion, that has crowned with victory a righteous cause for which many stalwart knights and gallant gentlemen have made the supreme sacrifice, because they knew that in the end the right must conquer. your success thus represents the working out of a great moral principle, and to explain the practical minutiae of these august processes is not always quite respectable. besides, if gisèle thought i wished to get rid of her she would most certainly resort to comments of which i prefer not to think."

but now into the room came the magician's wife, gisèle.

"she is, certainly, rather pretty," said niafer, to manuel.

said manuel, rapturously: "she is the finest and loveliest creature that i have ever seen. beholding her unequalled beauty, i know that here are all the dreams of yesterday fulfilled. i recollect, too, my songs of yesterday, which i was used to sing to my pigs, about my love for a far princess who was 'white as a lily, more red than roses, and resplendent as rubies of the orient,' for here i find my old songs to be applicable, if rather inadequate. and by this shabby villain's failure to appreciate the unequalled beauty of his victim i am amazed."

"as to that, i have my suspicions," niafer replied. "and now she is about to speak i believe she will justify these suspicions, for madame gisèle is in no placid frame of mind."

"what is this nonsense," says the proud shining lady, to miramon lluagor, "that i hear about your having been conquered?"

"alas, my love, it is perfectly true. this champion has, in some inexplicable way, come by the magic weapon flamberge which is the one weapon wherewith i can be conquered. so i have yielded to him, and he is about, i think, to sever my head from my body."

the beautiful girl was indignant, because she had recognized that, magician or no, there is small difference in husbands after the first month or two; and with miramon tolerably well trained, she had no intention of changing him for another husband. therefore gisèle inquired, "and what about me?" in a tone that foreboded turmoil.

the magician rubbed his hands, uncomfortably. "my dear, i am of course quite powerless before flamberge. inasmuch as your rescue appears to have been effected in accordance with every rule in these matters, and the victorious champion is resolute to requite my evil-doing and to restore you to your grieving parents, i am afraid there is nothing i can well do about it."

"do you look me in the eye, miramon lluagor!" says the lady gisèle. the dreadful prince of the seven madnesses obeyed her, with a placating smile. "yes, you have been up to something," she said, "and heaven only knows what, though of course it does not really matter."

madame gisèle then looked at manuel "so you are the champion that has come to rescue me!" she said, unhastily, as her big sapphire eyes appraised him over her great fan of gaily colored feathers, and as manuel somehow began to fidget.

gisèle looked last of all at niafer. "i must say you have been long enough in coming," observed gisèle.

"it took me two days, madame, to find and catch a turtle," niafer replied, "and that delayed me."

"oh, you have always some tale or other, trust you for that, but it is better late than never. come, niafer, and do you know anything about this gawky, ragtag, yellow-haired young champion?"

"yes, madame, he formerly lived in attendance upon the miller's pigs, down rathgor way, and i have seen him hanging about the kitchen at arnaye."

gisèle turned now toward the magician, with her thin gold chains and the innumerable brilliancies of her jewels flashing no more brightly than flashed the sapphire of her eyes. "there!" she said, terribly: "and you were going to surrender me to a swineherd, with half the hair chopped from his head, and with the shirt sticking out of both his ragged elbows!"

"my dearest, irrespective of tonsorial tastes, and disregarding all sartorial niceties, and swineherd or not, he holds the magic sword flamberge, before which all my powers are nothing."

"but that is easily settled. have men no sense whatever! boy, do you give me that sword, before you hurt yourself fiddling with it, and let us have an end of this nonsense."

thus the proud lady spoke, and for a while the victorious champion regarded her with very youthful looking, hurt eyes. but he was not routed.

"madame gisèle," replied manuel, "gawky and poorly clad and young as i may be, so long as i retain this sword i am master of you all and of the future too. yielding it, i yield everything my elders have taught me to prize, for my grave elders have taught me that much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife are finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs. so, if i yield at all, i must first bargain and get my price for yielding."

he turned now from gisèle to niafer. "dear snip," said manuel, "you too must have your say in my bargaining, because from the first it has been your cleverness that has saved us, and has brought us two so high. for see, at last i have drawn flamberge, and i stand at last at the doubtful summit of vraidex, and i am master of the hour and of the future. i have but to sever the wicked head of this doomed magician from his foul body, and that will be the end of him—"

"no, no," says miramon, soothingly, "i shall merely be turned into something else, which perhaps we had better not discuss. but it will not inconvenience me in the least, so do you not hold back out of mistaken kindness to me, but instead do you smite, and take your well-earned reward."

"either way," submitted manuel, "i have but to strike, and i acquire much wealth and sleek farming-lands and a lovely wife, and the swineherd becomes a great nobleman. but it is you, niafer, who have won all these things for me with your cleverness, and to me it seems that these wonderful rewards are less wonderful than my dear comrade."

"but you too are very wonderful," said niafer, loyally.

says manuel, smiling sadly: "i am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph i am frightened by my own littleness. look you, niafer, i had thought i would be changed when i had become a famous champion, but for all that i stand posturing here with this long sword, and am master of the hour and of the future, i remain the boy that last thursday was tending pigs. i was not afraid of the terrors which beset me on my way to rescue the count's daughter, but of the count's daughter herself i am horribly afraid. not for worlds would i be left alone with her. no, such fine and terrific ladies are not for swineherds, and it is another sort of wife that i desire."

"whom then do you desire for a wife," says niafer, "if not the loveliest and the wealthiest lady in all rathgor and lower targamon?"

"why, i desire the cleverest and dearest and most wonderful creature in all the world," says manuel,—"whom i recollect seeing some six weeks ago when i was in the kitchen at arnaye."

"ah, ah! it might be arranged, then. but who is this marvelous woman?"

manuel said, "you are that woman, niafer."

niafer replied nothing, but niafer smiled. niafer raised one shoulder a little, rubbing it against manuel's broad chest, but niafer still kept silence. so the two young people regarded each other for a while, not speaking, and to every appearance not valuing miramon lluagor and his encompassing enchantments at a straw's worth, nor valuing anything save each other.

"all things are changed for me," says manuel, presently, in a hushed voice, "and for the rest of time i live in a world wherein niafer differs from all other persons."

"my dearest," niafer replied, "there is no sparkling queen nor polished princess anywhere but the woman's heart in her would be jumping with joy to have you looking at her twice, and i am only a servant girl!"

"but certainly," said the rasping voice of gisèle, "niafer is my suitably disguised heathen waiting-woman, to whom my husband sent a dream some while ago, with instructions to join me here, so that i might have somebody to look after my things. so, niafer, since you were fetched to wait on me, do you stop pawing at that young pig-tender, and tell me what is this i hear about your remarkable cleverness!"

instead, it was manuel who proudly told of the shrewd devices through which niafer had passed the serpents and the other terrors of sleep. and the while that the tall boy was boasting, miramon lluagor smiled, and gisèle looked very hard at niafer: for miramon and his wife both knew that the cleverness of niafer was as far to seek as her good looks, and that the dream which miramon had sent had carefully instructed niafer as to these devices.

"therefore, madame gisèle," says manuel, in conclusion, "i will give you flamberge, and miramon and vraidex, and all the rest of earth to boot, in exchange for the most wonderful and clever woman in the world."

and with a flourish, manuel handed over the charmed sword flamberge to the count's lovely daughter, and he took the hand of the swart, flat-faced servant girl.

"come now," says miramon, in a sad flurry, "this is an imposing performance. i need not say it arouses in me the most delightful sort of surprise and all other appropriate emotions. but as touches your own interests, manuel, do you think your behavior is quite sensible?"

tall manuel looked down upon him with a sort of scornful pity. "yes, miramon: for i am manuel, and i follow after my own thinking and my own desire. of course it is very fine of me to be renouncing so much wealth and power for the sake of my wonderful dear niafer: but she is worth the sacrifice, and, besides, she is witnessing all this magnanimity, and cannot well fail to be impressed."

niafer was of course reflecting: "this is very foolish and dear of him, and i shall be compelled, in mere decency, to pretend to corresponding lunacies for the first month or so of our marriage. after that, i hope, we will settle down to some more reasonable way of living."

meanwhile she regarded manuel fondly, and quite as though she considered him to be displaying unusual intelligence.

but gisèle and miramon were looking at each other, and wondering: "what can the long-legged boy see in this stupid and plain-featured girl who is years older than he? or she in the young swaggering ragged fool? and how much wiser and happier is our marriage than, in any event, the average marriage!"

and miramon, for one, was so deeply moved by the staggering thought which holds together so many couples in the teeth of human nature that he patted his wife's hand. then he sighed. "love has conquered my designs," said miramon, oracularly, "and the secret of a contented marriage, after all, is to pay particular attention to the wives of everybody else."

gisèle exhorted him not to be a fool, but she spoke without acerbity, and, speaking, she squeezed his hand. she understood this potent magician better than she intended ever to permit him to suspect.

whereafter miramon wiped the heavenly bodies from the firmament, and set a miraculous rainbow there, and under its arch was enacted for the swineherd and the servant girl such a betrothal masque of fantasies and illusions as gave full scope to the art of miramon, and delighted everybody, but delighted miramon in particular. the dragon that guards hidden treasure made sport for them, the naiads danced, and cherubim fluttered about singing very sweetly and asking droll conundrums. then they feasted, with unearthly servitors to attend them, and did all else appropriate to an affiancing of deities. and when these junketings were over, manuel said that, since it seemed he was not to be a wealthy nobleman after all, he and niafer must be getting, first to the nearest priest's and then back to the pigs.

"i am not so sure that you can manage it," said miramon, "for, while the ascent of vraidex is incommoded by serpents, the quitting of vraidex is very apt to be hindered by death and fate. for i must tell you i have a rather arbitrary half-brother, who is one of those dreadful realists, without a scrap of aesthetic feeling, and there is no controlling him."

"well," manuel considered, "one cannot live forever among dreams, and death and fate must be encountered by all men. so we can but try."

now for a while the sombre eyes of miramon lluagor appraised them. he, who was lord of the nine sleeps and prince of the seven madnesses, now gave a little sigh; for he knew that these young people were enviable and, in the outcome, were unimportant.

so miramon said, "then do you go your way, and if you do not encounter the author and destroyer of us all it will be well for you, and if you do encounter him that too will be well in that it is his wish."

"i neither seek nor avoid him," manuel replied. "i only know that i must follow after my own thinking, and after a desire which is not to be satisfied with dreams, even though they be"—the boy appeared to search for a comparison, then, smiling, said,—"as resplendent as rubies of the orient."

thereafter manuel bid farewell to miramon and miramon's fine wife, and manuel descended from marvelous vraidex with his plain-featured niafer, quite contentedly. for happiness went with them, if for no great way.