University of Virginia Library

NOTE

(I invite readers who possess “The Triumph of Mammon” to reperuse it before beginning the second part of my trilogy. This note is for those who have not read the first part.)

Christian, the elder son of Christian, King of Thule, did in his twenty-first year, and upon his wedding-day during the sacrament of marriage, renounce Christianity, and therewith his birthright and his bride, Guendolen, a daughter of the King of the Isles. Unchristened immediately by his father (Thule is the one absolute monarchy in Europe in our day), and being exiled under the name of Mammon, he travelled for three years studying the world and the science thereof. In the meantime Guendolen agreed to marry Magnus, Mammon's brother, upon whom the succession devolved; but with her return to Christianstadt, the capital of Thule, for the marriage ceremony, Mammon also arrived, his mind made up, his heart hardened, and his extraordinary personal power urging him on, now at the beginning of

his twenty-fifth year, to attempt great things. Arrested at once by his brother, Magnus, with the approval of Aurelian, the ambassador of the Isles, and upon the advice of Guendolen, a most Christian princess, deeply, although unconsciously, in love with him, Mammon was clad in sackcloth, fastened to a large crucifix, and left alone in the chancel of the chapel royal.—An omen with some effect on Mammon's imagination was the salutation of a mad prophet who assured him upon his arrival that it is by torture men grow great.— Christian had forbidden Mammon to return to Thule, “save as a convertite, baresark and haltered”; and therefore when Mammon was brought before him from the chapel in the guise of a penitent, the King rejoiced, believing that the lost one had been found again. But the Christian device of Guendolen and Magnus for Mammon's compulsory conversion had failed; and the devout old king, maddened by his son's arrogant impenitence, accepted the counsel of Gottlieb, the Abbot of Christianstadt, who proposed to revive a disused, but unrepealed, law permitting castration in place of the capital sentence. Late at night, King Christian went to the chapel royal to fulfil this law himself. He announced his purpose to Mammon, and assured him of his sense of the greatness of the deed. He said:— To escape a doom so horrible Mammon professed penitence with such verisimilitude that the King was deceived, and severed his son's bonds instead of destroying his manhood. The moment he found himself at liberty Mammon killed his father. Then summoning his friend, Oswald, and other of his former intimates, he hurried with them to the bedroom of Magnus and Guendolen who had been hastily married. Arriving before the consummation of the marriage, Mammon flung his brother out of the room upon the swords of his companions, and took possession of Guendolen. Next morning the bodies of Christian and Magnus having been set out in St. Olaf's Hall, Gottlieb, the Abbot of Christianstadt, exposed the wounds to the people and denounced Mammon as the murderer. Mammon denied the charge, and had the Abbot removed in custody. He declared, further, that his father had died by his own hand in a fit of madness, and that his brother's death had been accidental. Having lied thus, he crowned himself. In the hall were representatives of the principal factions which in our time divide opinion in Thule, viz:—Socialists, calling themselves Reformers; Neo-Pagans, who desire the restoration of Norse mythology as a living faith; and the Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion, who deem the time ripe for the evolution of a new god. These having interviewed Mammon were in closer relation with him than the rest of the people in the hall; and the leader of the Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion, whom Mammon had offended earlier in the morning, took it on himself to suggest that Mammon should touch the bodies in proof of his innocence. Reluctantly Mammon did so; and as he stumbled against the catafalque on which the bodies lay, the leader of the Inceptors insisted that the wounds bled anew. Others observed, or professed to observe, the suggested, or desired, miracle; and Anselm, the papal legate, convinced of Mammon's guilt, excommunicated him and left the hall followed by almost all those who were present, including the Reformers, the Inceptors and the Neo-Pagans. In the square, Oswald, created Duke of Christianstadt for his share in the deeds of the previous night, arrested the legate by Mammon's order; and quelling the riot that broke out upon his action, entered the hall with a body of soldiers and the returned crowd. Mammon in the meantime had covered the bodies of his father and brother with curtains torn from a door entering upon the platform; but the sight of the bodies with the wounds exposed had been fixed in his brain indelibly. On the entrance of Oswald with assurance of the final success of the coup d'état, Mammon delivered an oration, the great message which inspired him enabling him to transcend all dishonour, all crime, the utmost evil that he could do, and, as the trilogy will finally show, the utmost evil that could be done to him. The conclusion of Mammon's oration will prepare the reader for “Mammon and his Message”:—

“Time is not; never was: a juggling trick,
A very simple one, of three tossed balls,
The sun, the moon, the earth, to cheat our sense
With day and night and seasons of the year.
This is eternity: here once in space
The Universe is conscious in you and me;
And if the earth and all that is therein
Were now to end, the task, the pain, the woe,
The travail of the long millennial tides
Since life began, would like a pleasant fancy
Fade in the thoughtless memory of matter;
Because in me the infinite Universe
Achieves at last entire self-consciousness,
And could be well content to sleep again
For ever, still evolving in its sleep
Systems and constellations and tracts of suns.
But I would have you all even as I am!
I want you to begin a world with me,
Not for posterity, but for ourselves.
Prophets have told that there has seized on us
An agony of labour and design
For those that shall come after such as no age
Endured before. I, Mammon, tell you, No!
We have come after! We are posterity!
And time it is we had another world
Than this in which mankind excreted soul,
Sexless and used and immaterial,
Upon the very threshold of the sun,
To wonder why the world should stink so! Men
Belov'd, women adored, my people, come,
Devise with me a world worth living in—
Not for our children and our children's children,
But for our own renown, our own delight!
All lofty minds, all pride, all arrogance,
All passion, all excess, all craft, all power,
All measureless imagination come!
I am your King; come, make the world with me!”

Between the date of this oration, and the opening of “Mammon and his Message,” a week elapses, the time having been employed by Mammon in the mobilization of the army of Thule, and its cantonment in and about Christianstadt.