“There were queer tales about this first Florian, also, who is reputed to have vanished the moment he was married, and to have re-appeared here, at Storisende, some thirty years later, with his youth unimpaired. He declared himself to have slept out the intervening while,—an excuse for remissness in his marital duties which sceptics have considered both hackneyed and improbable.” “Well,” Florian largely considered, “but then there is Sir Ogier still asleep in Avalon until France has need of him; and John the Divine is still sleeping at Ephesus until it is time to bear his witness against Antichrist; and there is Merlin in Broceliande, and there is St. Joseph of Arimathæa in the white city of Sarras—and really, monsieur my father, there is Melior, and all the rest of King Helmas’ people up at Brunbelois.” “Are you still dreaming of your Melior, tenacious child! Certainly you are logical, you cite good precedents for your namesake, and to adhere to logic and precedent is always safe. I hope you will remember that.” “I shall remember that, monsieur my father.” “Certainly, too, this story of persons who sleep for a miraculous while is common to all parts of the world. This Florian de Puysange, in any event, married a granddaughter of the great Dom Manuel; so that we descend from the two most famous of the heroes of Poictesme: but, I fancy, it is from Jurgen that our family has inherited the larger number of its traits.” “Anyhow, we have risen from just being vicomtes—” Florian’s father had leaned back, he had put off his provisional plan of going in to supper. You could not say that the good gentleman exactly took pride in his ancestry: rather, he found his lineage worthy of him, and therefore he benevolently approved of it. So he said now, complacently enough: “Yes, our house has prospered. Steadily our fortunes have been erected, and in dignity too we have been erected. Luck seems to favor us, however, most heartily when a woman rules France, and it is to exalted ladies that we owe most of our erections. Thus Queen Ysabeau the Bavarian notably advanced the Puysange of her time, very much as Anne of Beaujeu and Catherine de Medici did afterward. Many persons have noted the coincidence. Indeed, it was only sixty years ago that Marion de Lorme spoke privately to the Great Cardinal, with such eloquence that the Puysange of the day—another Florian, and a notably religious person,—had presently been made a duke, with an appropriate estate in the south—” “I know,” said Florian, not a bit humble about his erudition. “That is how we came to be here in Poictesme. Mademoiselle de Lorme was a very kind lady, was she not, monsieur my father?”