or
inattentive hearing the combat of the knights at Perdigon--out of which
came alive only Guivric and Coth and Anavalt and Gonfal,--or to speak of
the once famous battle of the tinkers, or to retell how the inflexible
syndics of Montors were imprisoned in a cage and slain by mistake. It no
longer really matters to any living person how the Northmen burned the
bridge of boats at Manneville; nor how Asmund trod upon a burned-through
beam at the disastrous siege of Evre, and so fell thirty feet into the
midst of his enemies and broke his leg, but dealt so valorously that he
got safe away; nor how at Lisuarte unarmored peasants beat off Manuel's
followers with scythes and pitchforks and clubs.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the color
is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they
wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and
their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there,
and grudge the paper needful to record the remarkable method by which
gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre on every chimney in Poictesme.

It is not even possible, nowadays, to put warm interest in those once
notable pots of blazing sulphur and fat and quicklime that were emptied
over the walls of Storisende, to the discomfort of Manuel's men. For
although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high
moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both
sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the
ruin, of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and
general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all
other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been
unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to
say so.

Therefore it suffices to report that there was much killing and misery
everywhere, and that in June, upon Corpus Christi day, the Conde de
Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible jocosity which
used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel's forces were defeated and
scattered.

[Illustration]

XXVI

Deals with the Stork

Now Manuel, driven out of Poictesme, went with his wife to Novogath,
which had been for some seven years the capital of Philistia. Queen
Stultitia, the sixtieth of that name to rule, received them friendlily.
She talked alone with Manuel for a lengthy while, in