Figures of Earth. James Branch Cabell

EXPLICIT

      PART ONE

       THE BOOK OF CREDIT

      CHAPTER

       I HOW MANUEL LEFT THE MIRE

       II NIAFER

       III ASCENT OF VRAIDEX

       IV IN THE DOUBTFUL PALACE

       V THE ETERNAL AMBUSCADE

       VI ECONOMICS OF MATH

       VII THE CROWN OF WISDOM

       VIII THE HALO OF HOLINESS

       IX THE FEATHER OF LOVE

      PART TWO

       THE BOOK OF SPENDING

       X ALIANORA

       XI MAGIC OF THE APSARASAS

       XII ICE AND IRON

       XIII WHAT HELMAS DIRECTED

       XIV THEY DUEL ON MORVEN

       XV BANDAGES FOR THE VICTOR

      PART THREE

       THE BOOK OF CAST ACCOUNTS

       XVI FREYDIS

       XVII MAGIC OF THE IMAGE-MAKERS

       XVIII MANUEL CHOOSES

       XIX THE HEAD OF MISERY

       XX THE MONTH OF YEARS

       XXI TOUCHING REPAYMENT

       XXII RETURN OF NIAFER

       XXIII MANUEL GETS HIS DESIRE

       XXIV THREE WOMEN

      PART FOUR

       THE BOOK OF SURCHARGE

       XXV AFFAIRS IN POICTESME

       XXVI DEALS WITH THE STORK

       XXVII THEY COME TO SARGYLL

       XXVIII HOW MELICENT WAS WELCOMED

       XXIX SESPHRA OF THE DREAMS

       XXX FAREWELL TO FREYDIS

       XXXI STATECRAFT

       XXXII THE REDEMPTION OF POICTESME

      PART FIVE

       THE BOOK OF SETTLEMENT

       XXIII NOW MANUEL PROSPERS

       XXXIV FAREWELL TO ALIANORA

       XXXV THE TROUBLING WINDOW

       XXXVI EXCURSIONS FROM CONTENT

       XXXVII OPINIONS OF HINZELMANN

       XXXVIII FAREWELL TO SUSKIND

       XXXIX THE PASSING OF MANUEL

       XL COLOPHON: DA CAPO

To

       Table of Contents

SIX MOST GALLANT CHAMPIONS

       Table of Contents

      Is dedicated this history of a champion: less to repay than to acknowledge large debts to each of them, collectively at outset, as hereafter seriatim.

      Author's Note

Figures of Earth is, with some superficial air of paradox, the one volume in the long Biography of Dom Manuel's life which deals with Dom Manuel himself. Most of the matter strictly appropriate to a Preface you may find, if you so elect, in the Foreword addressed to Sinclair Lewis. And, in fact, after writing two prefaces to this "Figures of Earth"—first, in this epistle to Lewis, and, secondly, in the remarks ¹ affixed to the illustrated edition—I had thought this volume could very well continue to survive as long as its deficiencies permit, without the confection of a third preface, until I began a little more carefully to consider this romance, in the seventh year of its existence.

      But now, now, the deficiency which I note in chief (like the superior officer of a disastrously wrecked crew) lies in the fact that what I had meant to be the main "point" of "Figures of Earth," while explicitly enough stated in the book, remains for every practical end indiscernible. … For I have written many books during the last quarter of a century. Yet this is the only one of them which began at one plainly recognizable instant with one plainly recognizable imagining. It is the only book by me which ever, virtually, came into being, with its goal set, and with its theme and its contents more or less pre-determined throughout, between two ticks of the clock.

      Egotism here becomes rather unavoidable. At Dumbarton Grange the library in which I wrote for some twelve years was lighted by three windows set side by side and opening outward. It was in the instant of unclosing one of these windows, on a fine afternoon in the spring of 1919, to speak with a woman and a child who were then returning to the house (with the day's batch of mail from the post office), that, for no reason at all, I reflected it would be, upon every personal ground, regrettable if, as the moving window unclosed, that especial woman and that particular child proved to be figures in the glass, and the window opened upon nothingness. For that, I believed, was about to happen. There would be, I knew, revealed beyond that moving window, when it had opened all the way, not absolute darkness, but a gray nothingness, rather sweetly scented. … Well! there was not. I once more enjoyed the quite familiar experience of being mistaken. It is gratifying to record that nothing whatever came of that panic surmise, of that second-long nightmare—of that brief but over-tropical flowering, for all I know, of indigestion—save, ultimately, the 80,000 words or so of this book.

      For