Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia Read online

  Brian Stableford

  THREE CONTES DE FÉES ATTRIBUTED TO CATHERINE DE LINTOT

  TIMANDRE AND BLEUETTE

  In the charming city of Cangam a prince reigned who was given the name of Silent. He was not loved by his subjects, because he spoke very little and only laughed rarely. He was, however, intelligent, he loved to do good and he governed his kingdom with a good deal of generosity, justice and prudence. So many fine qualities did not prevent conspiracies sometimes being formed against his life.

  Silent was not unaware of the extent to which he was hated. That hatred caused him a great deal of chagrin, but he hoped that by the force of benefits he might win the hearts of his people; that hope engaged him to appear frequently on a balcony of his palace that overlooked the main square; from there he distributed a considerable quantity of gold and silver.

  One evening, he perceived in the crowd a little old woman, simply dressed, who was holding a basket of herbs on her arm, and who shouted to him: “Sire, do me the favor of buying my herbs; I am so unfortunate that no one wants them, although they’re good and I sell them at a better price than others. If Your Majesty has that generosity, he will prevent me from dying of hunger.”

  Touched by the poverty of the poor woman, the king sent her a purse full of gold; she received it with a joy that is easy to imagine, and begged the man who brought her that money to take her basket of herbs, to give it to the king on her behalf, and to ask him for a brief audience.

  “Keep your basket,” the courtier said to her, mocking her.

  Fatima—that was the good woman’s name—was not put off, and she made the same plea to several other officers, but none of them would listen to her. She therefore made the decision to wait at the door of the palace for Silent to come out in order to go to the temple.

  When she perceived him, she approached him with a great deal of respect and said to him: “I’ve come to thank Your Majesty for the favor that he was kind enough to do me and to beg him to order that my herbs be taken to his cabinet. I cannot, Sire, give you a more sensible mark of my gratitude. This basket contains a present worthy of Your Majesty, if what a beautiful lady told me one day is true. She gave me a leaf of sorrel to compensate me for having allowed her to pick a few flowers in my garden. ‘Conserve this leaf carefully,’ she said to me; it has properties that render it precious. So long as you carry it on your person, no accident will happen to you.’

  “I’ve kept it for a long time, Sire, but, seeing that I could not sell my herbs today, I decided to give it up. I showed it to several people, and explained its virtues to them, offering to give it to them for very little, but I was treated as a madwoman. Chagrined, I threw it in my basket. If Your Majesty is curious to discover it, he will find it easily, because it is larger and longer than the others and there are several characters on it that I could not read.”

  The king thanked her, and had her given two purses similar to the first. Having the basket of herbs carried to his apartment then, he went back to look for the leaf, which he found without difficulty. Examining it attentively, he remarked that someone had indeed written on it that, by putting the leaf in the left hand, one rendered oneself invisible, and that by placing it over one’s heart, one could know the most secret thoughts of those who were nearby.

  Silent, wanting to test its virtue, placed it in his hand and then, traversing his apartments, he discovered with an infinite pleasure that no one could see him. Putting it over his heart then, he read in the mind of the captain of his guards that the man had the intention of assassinating him that very evening, in the hope of reigning in his stead.

  The king retired to his cabinet, had the traitor and his accomplices arrested, and their punishment followed immediately after they had confessed their crime.

  The prince, deeming that he was very fortunate to have such a useful herb, placed it in a little bag of golden cloth, which he always wore thereafter over his heart. By that means, he knew the character of all the people who approached him. He only perceived false hearts delivered to ambition, and slaves of the most shameful avarice.

  Frightened to find so many vices among his favorites and courtiers, he wanted to find out whether all his subjects were equally perverted; he found hardly any who were not different from what they appeared to be.

  Revolted by reigning over such a depraved people, Silent made the decision to abdicate the throne and to go to end his days in one of his castles, situated in the middle of a beautiful forest, preferring the mildness of a tranquil and solitary life to the tumult of the court and the honors that were rendered to him there.

  The queen, his wife, had died a long time ago, and had only left him from his marriage a daughter who had been stolen from her cradle by a huge black dog. Since then, it had not been possible for him to determine what had become of the princess in question, so nothing prevented him from making the decision to retreat. Solitude had charms for him that high society no longer presented; he liked to read and study. Although he was a prince he was a philosopher and a scholar, but he did not have the usual faults thereof; his knowledge did not render him insupportable, like many people; he was devoid of obstinacy and presumption, and not curious to hear his works praised. In sum, he rendered justice to those who spoke or thought better than he did.

  As he was getting ready to leave, he saw Abdal, a man of distinction and merit, entering his cabinet. The king had not seen him since he had been wearing the sorrel leaf; the minister had been prevented from appearing but a long and inconvenient malady. Silent, having no doubt that the newcomer was as scantly virtuous as the others, was about to leave without looking at him, but he made the reflection that, prior to his illness he had charged him with a few affairs that interested him particularly, and he asked him for an account of them.

  How surprised he was! He saw that Abdal was the only man in the realm who was veritably virtuous. He was so charmed by it that he embraced him, and told him that he merited wearing the crown that he had made the resolution to quit. He begged him to accept it, assuring him that his people would cherish him, because he had all the qualities necessary to make himself loved.

  In fact, Abdal was the most amiable of men; he had a noble air, beautiful eyes, a laughing mouth and a gracious smile; the sound of his voice was agreeable, he sang divinely, and knew everything. In sum, he was well made and had an infinite intelligence, but what rendered him accomplished was the generosity of his heart. Compassionate to the suffering of the unfortunate, his greatest pleasure was to help them, and he did it with a good will that charmed those he obliged as much as the pleasure itself. Everyone’s joy can therefore by imagined when people learned that Silent had ceded his kingdom to him on retiring.

  Abdal had done his best to turn the king away from the decision he had made, and not to reign in his stead, but he had been forced to obey, to the great contentment of the whole kingdom, by which he was adored and respected, along with the beautiful Zemona, his daughter, and the young Timandre, his son.

  That prince had a merit equal to his father’s he was so handsome and so well made that one could not see him without admiration. One day, when he was in a forest, occupied in reading a book that pleased him while instructing him, he saw a piece of paper fluttering in front of him on which something was written in golden letters; he got up in order to catch it, but as he tried to reach out for it, the paper drew away from him. Timandre ran after it, the paper moved further away, and did the same every time the prince tried to get closer to it.

  Timandre, not put off, wanted to see how far the paper would take him; he followed it all day, and found himself at nightfall in a part of the forest that was unfamiliar to him. Then the note came to settle in his hand, and the prince read the following:

  A charming princess

  Feels the strongest love for you;

  If you respond to her tenderness,

  You will possess her one day.

  But if your indifference

  Makes her shed any t
ears,

  You can prepare your constancy

  For all the greatest woes.

  The prince reread those lines several times, and was not frightened by the threats they contained. He did not doubt that one day, he would love the unknown princess very much. Thus far, he had not loved; no object had appeared to him to be worthy of his attachment. It was not that Zemona did not have a great many beauties in her retinue, but Timandre had always found faults in their mentality or in their humor.

  Belise, filled with self-esteem and incessantly occupied with the desire to please, wanted all hearts and only accorded a gracious smile to those who told her that she was beautiful. Celereine, at certain moments, was kind and affectionate, and at others she was disdainful and piquant. Fatma prided herself on being knowledgeable and hardly ever talked about anything but current affairs, was decided about everything, and did not think women intelligent enough to converse with her. Barbane was proud and bored by everything. Felice moved too much when she spoke, and had an expression that was too embarrassed or too pinched. In sum, of all the young women he knew, there was not one that could please him. He imagined that the one of whom the paper spoke must be everything he could desire.

  Flattered by that idea, he only thought about the pleasure of seeing her. What annoyed him greatly was that the little piece of paper did not indicate to him where she lived. In that uncertainty he walked on, in the hope of finding some house in the forest where he might be able to learn more about what he wanted to know.

  A few moments later he heard a buzz in the air; he looked up, and perceived a little throne of roses and jasmine sustained by a prodigious quantity of bees, which were flying slowly toward him. That spectacle astonished him greatly, but he was even more surprised when he saw the winged troop stop nearby, and one of the insects presented him with a rose-leaf, by which he was instructed to mount the throne without delay and allow himself to be taken to a place where he was awaited impatiently.

  Timandre, not making any reflection about the chagrin that he was about to cause the king and queen by his absence, did what any young person devoid of experience would have done. He did not listen to reason, and, abandoning himself to his inclination alone, placed himself in the midst of the jasmines and roses, and saw with an infinite pleasure that his little team cleaved through the air with an incredible velocity.

  He resembled an inhabitant of Olympus in that charming carriage; large curly brown tresses fell negligently over the blue and silver gauze coat in which he was clad. Two violet canaries were beside him on a jasmine branch, whistling two-part tunes with an astonishing accuracy; their sounds were so soft and sweet that one could not hear them without experiencing an agreeable emotion.

  The prince had never traveled with as much pleasure and such great speed, for his eyes, although very good, could not distinguish the different lands over which they passed. He traversed the air for four hours, and then the insects set down the carriage in a garden so magnificent and so surprising that it appeared to be the abode of the gods. He had never seen anything remotely like it.

  The sand in the pathways of the garden was gold and the branches of the trees were transparent, the color of emerald. The leaves, the most beautiful green in the world, never fell. Finally, all the trees were garnished with flowers and fruits that spread an odor so sweet and agreeable that the senses of smell and sight were equally satisfied. Patches of nascent grass were offered on all sides to anyone in quest of mild repose. Thousands of birds were singing in the shady pathways of the wood, in perfect harmony with a charming symphony that could be heard in the heavens.

  A continual spring reigned in that beautiful abode; no rain or wind ever made itself felt there; only the zephyr could blow there. Violets, hyacinths, jonquils and many other flowers were the only things that charming place produced. No useless plants were to be seen there and no inconvenient animals; white fallow deer wearing diamond necklaces ran through the woods; in the pathways one saw grouse, pheasants, turtle-doves, peacocks and squirrels; all those animals were tame and docile to the voice of anyone who called to them.

  Clear, fresh and pure water emerged from several springs and formed a quantity of little streams that flowed in rock crystal channels, the borders of which were garnished with violets and pansies. Palisades of jasmines, pomegranates and orange blossom were the only walls that forbade entry to that enchanted place. Timandre could not weary of admiring all those beauties, but he was dying of impatience to find the mistress of the charming garden.

  When he had been wandering for some time in the beautiful places he saw an ivory caleche passing by drawn by two stags whose antlers were gold, and in the caleche he perceived a young woman more beautiful than Hebe; he was enchanted by her, and tried to place himself in front of the carriage in order to stop it, but the deer were going so rapidly that he soon lost sight of it.

  That adventure would have afflicted him if he had had time to think about it, but twelve other caleches of Japanese porcelain, drawn by white unicorns and driven by twelve young women more beautiful than the first caused him such a great astonishment that he was as if paralyzed, unable to pronounce a single word. He repented of his silence, for an instant later he no longer saw any carriages.

  He followed the route they had taken rapidly, and advanced all the way to the end of a broad avenue, but when he arrived there he saw neither the caleches or the ladies who had given him so much curiosity; he discovered a canal that seemed to be infinite in length, and on which there were several crystal ships with masts of gold and sails of silver and roseate gauze; all the sailors were clad in silver cloth and carried garlands of flowers that served to attach golden reins to those superb vessels. The prince, surprised by that new spectacle, with reason, stopped and considered that fleet attentively, which was advancing slowly in his direction. A little launch was detached and came to the shore where he was.

  A child formed as Amour is depicted emerged therefrom and asked the prince whether he was not curious to know the beauty who reigned in that place. Timandre assured him that he could imagine no greater happiness than that of being able to render his homages to her.

  “Enter my boat, then,” said the child, with a malicious smile, “and you will not be long without achieving the fulfillment of your desires.”

  The prince did not have to be begged any longer; he leapt into the launch precipitately, which a gust of wind had soon brought close to the largest of the ships.

  He was received there by two young women, who led him over the deck to where the queen was sitting on a throne made of a single amethyst. Four lemon trees in emerald pots formed an arbor above her head, which had the most beautiful effect in the world.

  She got up when the prince had arrived nearby and, inviting him to sit down, she asked him whether he believed the lines that he had read in the forest and whether he had been touched by the hope that had been given to him.

  “I did not have enough vanity, Madame,” he said to her, “to dare to think that such a pleasant fate was destined for me. I believed, however, that I ought not to defer rendering to the amiable princess that had been announced to me. I departed, therefore, with the design of going to offer her my heart and my services. But Madame, your presence has already given birth in this heart to other sentiments that a divinity would not be capable of destroying. I would deem myself the most fortunate of mortals if you would permit me to make them known to you and if you were kind enough to suffer that I send my days admiring you.”

  “I grant you willingly what you are asking,” the queen said to him, “and I am glad to admit that I am the person for whom you are searching. I saw you yesterday in the forest from which my bees removed you; you were pursuing a stag with a great deal of ardor; you appeared to me to be a god, so charming did I find you. I sensed that you alone could make my felicity, so I formed the design to enable you to know what I thought and to attract you to my court; I carried out that design today. My name is Gracious and I am the daughter on
the Queen of the Fays. I possess the art of enchantment, as she does, and this place only depends on me.

  “This realm is the abode of the Pleasures; one encounters Laughters, Games and Graces everywhere; Chagrins and Ennuis are banished from it forever; I have engaged myself by an inviolable oath to punish them as soon as they appear; see whether you will be capable of preventing them from approaching you, and whether it is possible for you to love me as constantly as I demand. If you promise me a fidelity proof against anything, you will reign in this beautiful place and nothing will trouble the pleasures that are being prepared for you here.

  “If my heart, my hand and my crown cannot flatter you, you can return to Abdal’s court; I will have you taken back there, although I sense that your going away might make the unhappiness of my life. Make up your mind, but remember that a frightful destiny awaits you if you break your word to me.”

  Timandre, enchanted by Queen Gracious, swore to her that all the beauties in the world could never make him repent of his attachment to her, and that she would always be the unique object of his amour—an oath that lovers ordinarily make when they commence loving, but which they forget as soon as they are content.

  Gracious, satisfied by the assurance that the prince gave her, presented her hand to him, which he kissed with a transport that did not displease the queen. She had a conversation with him that, although very long, only appeared to have lasted a moment.

  Timandre found her the most perfect of all women; the most touching graces were distributed over her person; her mind was easy, fine and delicate. She was tall, and her figure was perfect. She had admirable breasts, arms and hands, but a thick veil hid her face and gave the prince a curiosity that he would have liked very much to satisfy; but she told him that it was not yet time for her to show herself to him, that she wanted to hide the shame of the confession that she had made to him to promptly, and that she also wanted to test whether she could be loved as much as she desired, without the aid of her face.