CHAPTER XXI

Both the old boatman and Mr. Keith were correct in their surmises.  There was trouble in the market-place, serious trouble; so serious that for the first time in five years—­ever since that deplorable scandal of the Irish lady and the poodle—­the Militia were being called out.  And it was entirely the fault of the Sacred Sixty-three.

The Messiah, personally, was not to blame.  That poor old man had much declined of late; he was enfeebled in health and spirits.  A French artist who was specially despatched from Paris to do an original sketch of him for the enterprising journal L’ILLUSTRATION had, at the end of several sittings, uncharitably declared him to be “COMPLEETEMENT GA-GA.”  The voluptuous surroundings of Nepenthe, the abundant food, adoration of disciples, alcoholic and carnal debaucheries, had impaired his tough Monjik frame and blunted his wit, working havoc with that energy and peasant craftiness which once ruled an Emperor’s Court.  His body was obese.  His mind was in a state of advanced putrefaction.  Even his personal cleanliness left something to be desired.  Sitting there, puffy and pasty, in a darkened room, he looked more than ever like some obscene vegetable that has grown up in the shade.

He moved seldom and with difficulty; he hardly ever opened his mouth save to eat—­for his appetite, thanks to certain daily exertions on the part of the communal doctor, was still fairly satisfactory.  When he spoke at all it was in scattered monosyllables which even the most devoted of his disciples were unable to arrange into such coherence as to justify their inclusion in the golden book.  All this, though hidden from the world at large, had been observed with dismay by the initiated.  It was an open secret among them that the last twenty-one sayings ascribed to him in that volume had never issued from his lips at all.  They had been concocted by a clique of young extremists, who were now masters of the situation.  These fanatics edited the golden book and held the old man completely in subjection, ousting his former and more moderate collaborators.

An ill-considered action on the part of this group led to the disaster and eclipsed the light of holiness on Nepenthe by bringing the apostles into conflict with the secular arm of the law.  Fretting at the Master’s prolonged inactivity and eager, after the fashion of disciples, to improve on his maxims, they decided on a bold step.  They decided that the time was ripe for a new Revelation.

The Messiah’s last authentic one, it will be remembered, ran to the effect that “flesh and blood of warm-blooded beast is Abomination to Little White Cows.”  He had been inspired to insert the word warm-blooded because fish, for example, was an article of diet of which he was inordinately fond, and he could not bring himself to deprive the faithful of this gift of God.