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:—
“This awful sacrifice shall light the cross
As with a human torch; the will of God—
No disembodied phantom in the mind
Of men evolving, but the God that made
The world—shall wondrously appear in me,
Enabled like the patriarch, like God
Himself, who offered up their sons, to kill
My seed in you, and show mankind once more
The most audacious faith, transcendent soul,
The triumph of the spirit.”
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.