Product Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 7. How Manuel Left the Mire THEY of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs. They tell also that Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him. Meanwhile in all the environs of Rathgor, and in the thatched villages of Lower Targamon, he was well liked: and when the young people gathered in the evening to drink brandy and eat nuts and gingerbread, nobody danced more merrily than Squinting Manuel. He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool. Then, too, young Manuel was very often detected smiling sleepily over nothing, and his gravest care in life appeared to be that figure which Manuel had made out of marsh clay from the pool of Haranton. This figure he was continually reshaping and re- altering. The figure stood upon the margin of the pool; and near by were two stones overgrown withmoss, and supporting a cross of old worm-eaten wood, which commemorated what had been done there. One day, toward autumn, as Manuel was sitting in this place, and looking into the deep still water, a stranger came, and he wore a fierce long sword that interfered deplorably with his walking. "Now I wonder what it is you find in that dark pool to keep you staring so?" the stranger asked, first of all. "I do not very certainly know," replied Manuel, "but mistily I seem to see drowned there the loves and the desires and the adventures I had when I wore another body than this. For the water of Haranton, I must tell you, is not like the water of other fountains, and curious dreams engender in this pool." "I speak no ill agai...
From the Publisher
James Branch Cabell (1879-1956) is best known for his tales of the imaginary land of Poictesme, where chivalry and galantry live on. All of Cabell's works from before 1930 were assembled into the grand "Biography of the Life of Manuel," the supposed redeemer of the land of Poictesme, and they form a series which follows Manuel and his descendants through the centuries.
Cabell has been a favorite author of many famous writers, ranging from Lin Carter to Robert A. Heinlein.
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