Jurgen by James Branch Cabell

Author:James Branch Cabell [Cabell, James Branch]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780486149592
Publisher: Tandem
Published: 1919-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXVII

VEXATIOUS ESTATE OF QUEEN HELEN

“BUT how can I travel with the Equinox, with a fictitious thing, with a mere convention ? ” Jurgen had said. “ To demand any such proceeding of me is preposterous.”

“ Is it any more preposterous than to travel with an imaginary creature like a centaur ? ” they had retorted. “ Why, Prince Jurgen, we wonder how you, who have done that perfectly unheard-of thing, can have the effrontery to call anything else preposterous ! Is there no reason at all in you ? Why, conventions are respectable, and that is a deal more than can be said for a great many centaurs. Would you be throwing stones at respectability, Prince Jurgen ? Why, we are unutterably astounded at your objection to any such well-known phenomenon as the Equinox ! ” And so on, and so on, and so on, said they.

And in fine, they kept at him until Jurgen was too confused to argue, and his head was in a whirl, and one thing seemed as preposterous as another : and he ceased to notice any especial improbability in his travelling with the Equinox, and so passed, without any further protest or argument about it, from Cocaigne to Leukê. But he would not have been thus readily flustered had Jurgen not been thinking all the while of Queen Helen and of the beauty that was hers.

So he inquired forthwith the way that one might quickliest come into the presence of Queen Helen.

“ Why, you will find Queen Helen,” he was told, “ in her palace at Pseudopolis.” His informant was a hamadryad, whom Jurgen encountered upon the outskirts of a forest overlooking the city from the west. Beyond broad sloping stretches of ripe corn, you saw Pseudopolis as a city builded of gold and ivory, now all a dazzling glitter under a hard-seeming sky that appeared unusually remote from earth.

“ And is the Queen as fair as people report ? ” asks Jurgen.

“ Men say that she excels all other women,” replied the Hamadryad, “ as immeasurably as all we women perceive her husband to surpass all other men——”

“ But, oh, dear me ! ” says Jurgen.

“—Although, for one, I see nothing remarkable in Queen Helen’s looks. And I cannot but think that a woman who has been so much talked about ought to be more careful in the way she dresses.”

“ So this Queen Helen is already provided with a husband ! ” Jurgen was displeased, but saw no reason for despair. Then Jurgen inquired as to the Queen’s husband, and learned that Achilles, the son of Peleus, was now wedded to Helen, the Swan’s daughter, and that these two ruled in Pseudopolis.

“ For they report,” said the Hamadryad, “ that in Adês’ dreary kingdom Achilles remembered her beauty, and by this memory was heartened to break the bonds of Adês: so did Achilles, King of Men, and all his ancient comrades come forth resistlessly upon a second quest of this Helen, whom people call—and as I think, with considerable exaggeration—the wonder of this world.

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