roness.

Clovis rearranged several cushions to his personal solace and
satisfaction; he knew that the Baroness liked her guests to be
comfortable, and he thought it right to respect her wishes in that
particular.

"Have I ever told you the story of Saint Vespaluus?" he asked.

"You've told me stories about grand-dukes and lion-tamers and
financiers' widows and a postmaster in Herzegovina," said the Baroness,
"and about an Italian jockey and an amateur governess who went to
Warsaw, and several about your mother, but certainly never anything
about a saint."

"This story happened a long while ago," he said, "in those
uncomfortable piebald times when a third of the people were Pagan, and
a third Christian, and the biggest third of all just followed whichever
religion the Court happened to profess. There was a certain king
called Hkrikros, who had a fearful temper and no immediate successor in
his own family; his married sister, however, had provided him with a
large stock of nephews from which to select his heir. And the most
eligible and royally-approved of all these nephews was the
sixteen-year-old Vespaluus. He was the best looking, and the best
horseman and javelin-thrower, and had that priceless princely gift of
being able to walk past a supplicant with an air of not having seen
him, but would certainly have given something if he had. My mother has
that gift to a certain extent; she can go smilingly and financially
unscathed through a charity bazaar, and meet the organizers next day
with a solicitous 'had I but known you were in need of funds' air that
is really rather a triumph in audacity. Now Hkrikros was a Pagan of
the first water, and kept the worship of the sacred serpents, who lived
in a hallowed grove on a hill near the royal palace, up to a high pitch
of enthusiasm. The common people were allowed to please themselves,
within certain discreet limits, in the matter of private religion, but
any official in the service of the Court who went over to the new cult
was looked down on, literally as well as metaphorically, the looking
down being done from the gallery that ran round the royal bear-pit.
Consequently there was considerable scandal and consternation when the
youthful Vespaluus appeared one day at a Court function with a rosary
tucked into his belt, and announced in reply to angry questionings that
he had decided to adopt Christianity, or at any rate to give it a
trial. If it had been any of the o