The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  It was therefore, to the now aging Bishop, whensoever he put on his mitre and the white linen robe of his office, a privilege and a delight to preach of faith and hope and charity to his little flock. These frightened, foolish, and yet rather lovable men and women did need so dreadfully, in their cheerless and thwarted living, the ever-present threat and the ever-present promise of true religious faith to keep them sane or, for that matter, to keep them at all endurable associates. So the Bishop served his art lovingly; he delighted in the exercise of his art: for he saw that religious faith was highly necessary to the well-being of the lower classes, and was serviceable and comforting to the gentry also as one got on in life.

  He had few regrets. He regretted Ettarre, the lost witch-woman, because no Christian whom he had ever known, howsoever charitable and zealous, had approached the charm of that little darling when she was pretending to be a saint come out of Paradise. He regretted that it no longer amused him to run abroad in his wolf’s skin. Once in a while, of course, that was necessary as a professional duty—after loving kindness and the customary dole of soup and blankets had failed,—in order to dispose of some open case of irreligion and ill-living which afforded a really dangerous example to the diocese: but such sinners were, almost always, so anaemic and stringy that the Bishop had come honestly to dislike this branch of his church-work. In fine, he conceded, willingly enough, that Odo of Valneres was approaching the end of his middle age; and that his main delights must be henceforward in his art.

  And sometimes he regretted, too, that his art could not extend to yet other mythologies. He admired the clearer character drawing of the gods whom he found in these other mythologies. There were fine themes for a creative artist in the exalted doings of Zeus, the Cloud-collecting, the Thunder-hurler, who was called also Muscarius, because he drove away flies: and in the zoological amours of Zeus you would have had an opportunity for much rich, bold, romantic coloring, with the flesh tints handsomely rendered.

  Then the heroic conception of Ragnarok, that final and most great of all battles between good and evil—wherein the Norse gods, and the entire Scandinavian church militant along with them, were to perish intrepidly for the right’s sake,—was a theme which, in view of its sublime possibilities in the pulpit of a sincere artist, thrilled the reflective Bishop like a trumpet music.

  It was a dangerous notion, though, thus to portray religion as in the end an unprofitable business enterprise, which broke up in cosmic bankruptcy; and of course his little flock would never in this world appreciate the tragic heroism of Ragnarok. No: for you had to hearten the middle classes with the prospects of exceedingly shiny rewards which would be eternal, in a golden city that you entered through a gate of pearl. Still, as a theme, the Bishop greatly fancied Ragnarok.

  Then, too, the Bishop meditated, how charming it would be, once in a way,—or throughout, perhaps, the entire, rather depressing Lenten season,—to make use of the delightfully quaint effects of African or of Polynesian mythology from his pulpit. One had so rarely, from that restrained and over-sedate eminence, the chance to exercise one’s gifts of quiet humor and of that naïveté in which supreme artists alone excel. Yes: it would be wholly pleasant to tell one’s little flock about Gajjimare the Snake God, and about the misadventures of Barin Mutum after this half-being had borrowed a body for nuptial purposes, and about the wonders which Maui-shaped-in-the-topknot-of-Taranga performed with his great-grandmother’s jawbone.

  But, after all, the artist must work in that material which is available. After all, Christianity displayed many excellent points and gratifying improvements added since the decease of its founder. And as a theme—whensoever that theme was handled with competence, and touched with true inspiration,—Christianity served handsomely enough to keep one’s little flock contented, by assuring them of oncoming rewards for prudent and respectable conduct. No altruist could ask for more.

  The Bishop smiled, and got back to his Christmas sermon.

  In brief, there was never a more respected nor a more generally beloved bishop in those parts. And it was a great loss to Naimousin and all Piemontais when one morning the blessed Odo quitted the episcopal palace, he did not remember just when or through what agency.

9. OF THE REWARD APPOINTED FOR HIM

  In fact, it was with something of a shock that the blessed Odo awakened to his unclerical circumstances. To be abroad in his nightgown was bad enough: but it seemed out of reason that, in such informal attire, he should be floating thus through a gray void, upborne by what appeared an unusually thick and soft and gaudily colored rug, and sharing its tenancy with this young woman.