The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 16, October 1872-March 1873
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
During the famous period in which our prince served his sire in the
administration of justice, the dungeons were never empty of thieves and
wranglers, nor the axe long idle for want of miscreant heads. To a peasant
who once stole an apple, he said, “How now, varlet, dost confess?”
Answered the trembling churl: “Nay, most puissant lord, I stole not the
fruit.” Then spoke Philip: “By my halidom, I’ll mend thine honesty”;
whereupon the fellow was put on the rack till he broke a blood‐vessel,
still not confessing, for it was death to steal an apple out of the duke’s
garden. At night the peasant died in his bed of a hemorrhage, piously
acknowledging in his last moments that he had committed the theft; whereat
was another flourish of trumpets. Life is a great lesson, however, and it
must not be supposed that our powerful hero could content himself with a
few exploits at court when he felt that he had a mission to reform the
world.
Therefore it was that Philip the Mighty set out upon a knight’s errand to
slay all the witches, devils, malefactors, giants, goblins, and monsters
that came in his path. But one squire rode with him, bearing a golden
trumpet, which, when Peter had done to death a sour‐faced hag who shrieked
at him on the mountain‐side, he blew right merrily. Now, the old witch had
asked the valiant knight for justice against her lord at court. Life is a
science not to be mastered without blows; and Philip learned to slay and
fear not in such stout earnest that soon he won the renown of being, as in
fact he was called, the Champion Wrong‐killer of the age.
When a foul, black‐hearted necromancer was tracked to his hiding‐place,
what else should our good knight do but put him to the sword? When a five‐
eyed dwarf was accused of deviltry, who else should carve him for the
crows but our duke’s son? When a grim ogre, breathing death and fury,
beset him whose arm was so mighty, when malefactors pestered the land,
when monsters of all kind raged on every hand, who dealt them such
lightning doom as the champion wrong‐killer? On every occasion did his
trusty squire blow the trumpet of gold right lustily, to the wonder of
lords and people. Now, it was whispered that the slain sorcerers had
helped husbandmen and artisans with their strange inventions; that the
malefactors were slaughtered outright for the crimes of their fellows;
that the giants were amiable men, sometimes, but provoked beyond
endurance; that dwarfs and witches were poor old people, seldom as bad as
they seemed to be. Nevertheless, the real monsters of the land increased
day by day, in spite of the champion killer’s sword and his squire’s
golden trumpet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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