The Path of the King

nd hospices, the like of which were not in Picardy, was happy in all things but her family. Her one son had fallen in his youth in an obscu

et upon rustic sports, slow at learning, and averse alike from camps and cities. The ambition of the grandmother found nothi

at destiny, and the form of it she took to be sanctitude. For, all her married days she had ruled her life according to the canons of God, fasting and praying, cherishing the poor, tending the afflicted, giving of her great wealth bountifully to the Church. She had a name for holiness

her Ambrose, his tutor, reported him of quick and excellent parts, but marred by a dreaminess which might grow into desidia that deadly sin. He had a peculiar grace of body and a silken courtesy of manner which won hearts. His grey eyes, even as a small boy, were serious and wise. But he seemed to dwell aloof, and while his broth

end of it; or, like his brother's, a green place of earthy jollity. It was as if the Breton blood of the Lavals and Rohans had brought to the solid stock of Beaumanoir the fairy whimsies of their dim ancestors. While the moors and woodlands were to Aimery only places to fly a hawk or follow a stag, to Philip they wer

a coppice. There was no figure in the piece, which was bounded on one side by a great armoire, and on the other by the jamb of the chimney; but from extreme corner projected the plume of a helmet and the tip of a lance. There was someone there; someone riding towards the trees. It grew upon Philip that that little wood was a happy place, most happy and des

me as that in the bedroom arras. There were the river, the meadows, and the little wood, painted in colours far brighter than the tapestry. Never was such bloom of green or such depth of blue. But there was a difference. No lance or plume projected from the corner. The traveller had emerged from cover, and was walking waist-deep in the lus

atin, writing it with an elegance worthy of Niccolo the Florentine. At fourteen he entered the college of Robert of Sorbonne, but found little charm in its scholastic pedantry. But in the capital he learned the Greek tongue from a Byzantine, the elder Lascaris, and copied with his own hand a great part of Plato and Aristotle. His thirst grew with every draught of the new vintage. To Pavia he went and sat at the feet of Lorenzo Vallo. The company of Pico della Mirandola at Florence sealed him of the Platonic school, and like his master he dallied with mysteries and had a Jew in his house to teach him Hebrew

more aloof than ever. There was little warmth in the grace of his courtesy, and his eyes were graver than before. It seemed that they had found much, but had had no joy of it, and that they were still craving. It was a disease of the time and men called it aegritudo. "No saint," the aged Ambrose told the Countess. "Virtuous, indeed, but not with the virtue of the religious. He will never enter the Church. He has drunk at headier streams." Th

are beguiled by such baubles as the holy Saint Gregory denounced, poetarum figmenta sive delirame

ht and darkness-God and Antichrist-the narrow way of salvation and a lost world. She was obsessed by the peril of her darling. Her last ac

e dying woman spoke a tongue he had forgotten. Their two worlds were divided by a gulf which affection could not

ways been the child of my heart, Philip, and I cannot die at ease till I am assured of your salvation.... I have the prev

ng its cool cloisters? A year ago, when he had been in the mood of seeing all contraries but as degrees in an ultimate truth, he might have assented. But in that dim chamber, with burning faces around h

n do the will of God, but God must speak His will

girlhood. Once another in a forest inn had spoken thus to her. S

in tears. Presently he found himself denied her chamber, unless he could give assurance of a changed mind. And so the uneasy days went o

to ease his conscience must abide strictly by the consequences. Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn hap

I grow fat. Ugh, this business of dying chills me." And then with a very red face he held out a gold ring.

I found this yesterday, and you being the scholar among us s

. . . . . .

ed southward. In the green singing world the pall lifted from his spirits. The earth which God had made was assuredly bigger and better t

und, as Pythagoras held, so that if a man travelled west he would come in time to Asia where the sun rose. Philip brooded over the queer pages, letting his fancy run free, for he had been so wrapped up in the mysteries of man's soul that he had forgotten the mysteries of the earth which is that soul's pl

. . . . . .

odging at Florence he handled once again his treasures-his books from Ficino's press; his manuscripts, some from Byzantium yellow with age, some on clean white vellum new copied by his order; his busts and gems and intagl

inity. There was a feud among the Platonists on a matter of interpretation, in which already stilettos had been drawn. More bitter still was the strife about mistresses-kitchen-wenches and courtesans, where one scholar stole shamelessly from the other and decked with names like Leshia and Erinna.... Philip sic

rned to spacious and honourable quests, not to monkish hells and heavens or inward

ung a massive chain of gold, and his broad belt held a richly chased dagger. He had unbuckled his sword, and it lay on the table holding down certain vagrant papers which fluttered in the evening wind. His face was hard and red like sandstone, and around his eyes were a multitude of fine wrinkles. It was these eyes that arrested Philip. They were of a pale brown as if bleached by weathe

draught," he said. "Will you h

talk, could not refuse. He sat down by the board, and moved aside

, and saw that it was a copy of Andrea Bianco's chart, drawn nearly half a cent

he plucked a sheet from below the rest, "here is a better, which F

ica, but with a clear ocean way round the south of it. His inter

a way to the

... If these matters interest you? But the thought of t

ague and we sailed with little goodwill; therefore it was our business to confound the doubters or perish. Already our seamen had reached the mouth of that mighty river

swept the decks and washed away the Virgin on the bows of the Admiral's ship; of landfall at last in a place where the forests were knee deep in a muddy sea, strange forests where the branches twined like snakes; of a going ashore at a river mouth full of toothed serpents and giant apes, and of a fight with Behem

before the turn

from land and no man can

d wheels of a certain diameter fixed to their ships' sides which the water turn

ld hear more of it. What a thing it is to have le

n cape of Africa. He steered west by north, looking for no land till Guinea was sighted. "But on the second morning we saw land to the northward, and following it westward came to a mighty cape so high that the top was in the clouds. There was such a gale from the east that we could do no more than gaze on it as we

sion

We landed, and set up a cross and ate the fruits and drank the water of the land. Likewise we changed its name from

beyon

not grown foul and our crews mutinous from fear of the unknown. It is clear to me that we must es

rney from one village to another. Something in his serious calm powerfu

our name, Sig

a citizen of Genoa, but these m

The de Lavals were known as a great h

plate anoth

uest of maps, for these Venetians are the

Cath

bright strange world had been spread before him co

surance of that which we already know. I have shown the road: let others p

ine. But where the two sat it was quiet and dusky, though without on the canal the sky made a golden mirror. Philip could see his companion's face i

ws on the board and his

p-the loftiest, I think, since Moses led Israel over the deserts. I am seeking a promised land. Not Cathay, but a greater. I sail presently,

sy-I am no scholar-but he pointed a good moral. For, said he, the old things pass away and the boundaries of the world are shifting. Here in Europe we have come to knowledge of salvation, and brought the soul and mind of man to an edge and brightness like a sword. Having perfected the weapon, it is now God's will that we enter into possession of the new earth whi

p as if to invite contradic

ista went on; "it is the belief of the great

of a greater than

ancients?" Batti

e sages Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Ptolemy amplified the teaching. It is found in the poetry of Manilius and Seneca, and it was a common thought in the minds of Virgil and Ovid and Pliny. You

and such as I been fumbling in the dark when the great ones of old saw clear

sphere, his course will be a descent, and on his way

land there is no such descent, and in this Mediterranean sea of ours one can sail as easily from Cadiz to

d reach Cathay

"There is a land between us and Cathay, a great

d Marco Polo's book in the Latin ve

Of Cipango the Venetians have told us m

than Hy-Brasil. There he found men, broad-faced dusky men, with gentle souls, and saw such miracles as have never been vouchsafed to mortals. 'Twas not Cipango or Cathay' for there were no Emperors or cities, but a peaceful race dwelling in innocence. The land was like Ede

lo

y call him. He is a hard man and a bitter, but a master seaman, and th

burning eyes

t do you see

arred by his own nature. Something of his grandmother's blood clamoured within him for a sharper air than

of Life," he said simply

et he produced a packet rolled in fine leather, and shook papers on the table. One of these was a soil

n both sides were hills dotted with trees. The centre seemed to be meadows, sown with villages and gardens. In one cr

Battista. "Will you join me an

an or two, and a man who from the richness of his dress seemed to be one of the princely merchants who played Maecenas to the New Learning. But what caught Philip's sight was a little group of Byzantines who were the guests of honour. They wore fantastic headdresses and long female robes, above

d Battist

" he said, "over the

. . . . . .

thing was heard of its fate. At the end of that time a tattered little vessel reached Bordeaux, and Philip landed on the soil of Franc. He had a strange story to tell. The ship had been caught up by a current which had borne it north for the space of fifteen days till landfall was made on the coast of what we now call South Carolina. There it had been beached in an estuary, while t

the curtain falls. It would appear that the colony did not prosper, for it is on record that Philip in the year 1521 was living at his house at Eaucourt, a married man, occupied with books and the affairs of his little seigneury. A portrait of him stil