The Queen Pedauque eBook

To the considerate, therefore, it may appear expedient to dismiss Coignard’s trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking, as just the infelicitous outcropping, in the dying man’s enfeebled condition, of an hereditary foible.  And when moralising would approach an admonitory forefinger to the point that Coignard’s manner of living brought him to die haphazardly, among preoccupied strangers at a casual wayside inn, you do, there is no questioning it, recall that a more generally applauded manner of living has been known to result in a more competently arranged-for demise, under the best churchly and legal auspices, through the rigors of crucifixion.

So it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles, and to consider instead the justice of Coignard’s fine epitaph, wherein we read that “living without worldly honors, he earned for himself eternal glory.”  The statement may (with St. Peter keeping the gate) have been challenged in paradise, but in literature at all events the unhonored life of Jerome Coignard has clothed him with glory of tolerably longeval looking texture.  It is true that this might also be said of Iago and Tartuffe, but then we have Balzac’s word for it that merely to be celebrated is not enough.  Rather is the highest human desideratum twofold,—­D’etre celebre et d’etre aime.  And that much Coignard promises to be for a long while.

     James Branch Cabell

      Dumbarton Grange,
        July, 1921,

THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE

CHAPTER I

Why I recount the singular Occurrences of my Life

I intend to give an account of some odd occurrences in my life.  Some have been exquisite, some queer Recollecting them, I am myself in doubt if I have not dreamed them.  I have known a Gascon cabalist, of whom I could not say that he was wise, because he perished miserably, but he delivered sublime discourses to me, on a certain night on the Isle of Swans, speeches [Footnote:  The original manuscript, written in a fine hand, of the eighteenth century, bears the sub-heading “Vie et Opinions de M. l’Abbe Jerome Coignard” [The Editor].] I was happy enough to keep in my memory, and careful enough to put into writing.  Those speeches referred to magic and to occult sciences, with which people were very much infatuated in my days.

Everyone speaks of naught else but Rosicrucian mysteries.[Footnote:  This writing dates from the second half of the eighteenth century [The Editor]].  Besides I do not myself expect to gain great honour by these revelations.  Some will say that everything is of my own invention, and that it is not the true doctrine, others that I only said what one had already known.  I own that I am not very learned in cabalistic lore, my master having perished at the beginning of my initiation.  But, little as I have learned of his craft, it makes me vehemently suspect that all of it is illusion, deception and vanity.