Allegories; Fantasy fiction; Historical fiction; Middle Ages -- Fiction
And now as his beautiful young mother impartially petted and snapped
at him, poor Jurgen thought of that very real dissension and
severance which in the oncoming years was to arise between them; and
of how she would die without his knowing of her death for two whole
months; and of how his life thereafter would be changed, somehow,
and the world would become an unstable place in which you could no
longer put cordial faith. And he foreknew all the remorse he was to
shrug away, after the squandering of so much pride and love. But
these things were not yet: and besides, these things were
inevitable.
"And yet that these things should be inevitable is decidedly not
fair," said Jurgen.
So it was with all the persons he encountered. The people whom he
loved when at his best as a fine young fellow were so very soon, and
through petty causes, to become nothing to him, and he himself was
to be converted into a commonplace tradesman. And living seemed to
Jurgen a wasteful and inequitable process.
Then Jurgen left the home of his youth, and rode toward Bellegarde,
and tethered his horse upon the heath, and went into the castle.
Thus Jurgen came to Dorothy. She was lovely and dear, and yet, by
some odd turn, not quite so lovely and dear as the Dorothy he had
seen in the garden between dawn and sunrise. And Dorothy, like
everybody else, praised Jurgen's wonderful new shirt.
"It is designed for such festivals," said Jurgen, modestly--"a
little notion of my own. A bit extreme, some persons might consider
it, but there is no pleasing everybody. And I like a trifle of
color."
For there was a masque that night at the castle of Bellegarde: and
wildly droll and sad it was to Jurgen to remember what was to befall
so many of the participants.
Jurgen had not forgotten this Wednesday, this ancient Wednesday upon
which Messire de Montors had brought the Confraternity of St. Médard
from Brunbelois, to enact a masque of The Birth of Hercules, as the
vagabonds were now doing, to hilarious applause. Jurgen remembered
it was the day before Bellegarde discovered that Count Emmerick's
guest, the Vicomte de Puysange, was in reality the notorious outlaw,
Perion de la Forêt. Well, yonder the yet undetected impostor was
talking very earnestly with Dame Melicent: and Jurgen knew all that
was in store for this pair of lovers.
Meanwhile, as Jurgen reflected, the real Vicomte de Puysange was at
this moment lying in a delirium, yonder at Benoit's: to-morrow the
true Vicomte would be recognized, and within the year the Vicomte
would have married Félise de Soyecourt, and later Jurgen would meet
her, in the orchard; and Jurgen knew what was to happen then also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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