Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia

by Brian Stableford

  Excessively jealous, if anyone speaks to their princess or if, by some mischance, she casts a glance at someone, all their tenderness turns to fury; adieu all assurances and all oaths; adieu letters, notes, bracelets, portraits; everything is forgotten on either side, torn up, smashed; they no longer want to see one another, they do not even want to hear mention of one another…unless, an opportunity presents itself, and by the greatest good fortune in the world, one never fails to turn up. What to do then? It is necessary to enlighten one another; and once the enlightenment is complete, it is necessary to patch things up; at every reconciliation there are always little expenses; the princess takes them on her account, and there is peace made, until further adventure.

  But there is something more dangerous in that regard; that is when one of the two is maliciously obstinate in concealing from the other the subject of a secret discontentment, as the overly credulous and taciturn Fanny sometimes does, from her overly melancholy and somber lover.16 That always gives rise to the most tragic adventures; it is true that without that, the sad hero would have difficulty in reaching the fifth volume, but is that not paying too dearly for the advantage of having one volume more?

  I could add here several other features of the Romancian character: that they are naturally pensive and distracted; that they are overly fond of swearing, and that oaths cost them nothing; that they forget them rather easily when they have obtained what they desire; and other similar features. As I have much more to say, however, I shall not extend myself further on this subject. Also, it is necessary that I relate the marvelous encounter I had in the forest of adventures.

  V. Encounter and awakening of Prince Zazaraph,

  great paladin of Dondindandia, with the dictionary of the Romancian language.

  Although it was not difficult to recognize by my manners and my language that I was a newcomer to the land, all the people I met and with whom I conversed, apparently too occupied with their particular affairs, hardly ever thought of offering me any assistance, even though they were otherwise very polite. Finally, a handsome young man who might perhaps have been importuned by my presence, addressing me in speech, asked me whether I had passed through the forest of adventures.

  “No,” I said to him. “I don’t even know where it is.”

  “Well,” he said, “you’ll be wasting your time here until you’ve gone through it. As you’re newly arrived, it’s only just to inform you. That forest is called the forest of adventures because one never passes through it without encountering one, and as this land is the land of adventures, it’s necessary that newcomers, as soon as they arrive, pass through the forest, in order then to be naturalized in Romancia. It isn’t far from here, and by following that little path to the right you’ll encounter it.”

  I thanked the person who had given me such important advice as best I could, and, having set forth, I soon arrived at the forest.

  As I entered it I heard a great racket above my head, even more disagreeable than that made by a flock of frightened magpies flying from tree to tree in order give one another the alarm. I saw immediately what species of bird it was that was making the noise: they were harpies. Everyone knows that those bird-women are great talkers, and they are no less gluttonous.17 Just then they were hurling themselves furiously at a table and seizing the meat with which it was laden. Although I was not carrying any provisions, I nevertheless put myself on guard, sword in hand. I knew that that was the best means of warding them off; but I did not receive any insult, and I escaped with enduring the frightful infection with which they poison the air around them.

  A little further on I found innumerable parrots, which were speaking all languages with an admirable facility, bluebirds, white blackbirds, flame-colored crows, phoenixes and a quantity of other birds that are only ever seen in that land; but that spectacle did not make me pause for long, because an unexpected object attracted my gaze.

  I perceived a knight lying under a large tree, who appeared to be profoundly asleep. I approached him immediately, and after having contemplated his face for a while, which had something noble and amiable about it, and his stature, which was very fine, I deliberated as to whether I ought to wake him, in order to ask for clarifications of which I had need, but I judged that it would be more honest to wait for him to wake up.

  I did, in fact wait for quite a long time, but finally, following the movements of my impatience, I approached him. I took his hand, called to him, and even shook him, but it was all in vain.

  I did not know what to think about such an extraordinary slumber, and, imagining that the unfortunate knight might have fallen into a lethargy, I applied to his nose and temples a divine water that I was carrying on me. I had the chagrin, however, of seeing my remedy fail. In the end, I remembered that in Romancia the plants have astonishing virtues. Immediately, I collected a few of them, which appeared to me to be the most singular, and in order to try their effect I rubbed the face of the sleeping knight with them. The first did not succeed, but having collected some of another species, scarcely had I made him smell them than he woke up instantly with a great sneeze, which make the forest resound and put all the birds in the vicinity to flight.

  “Generous Prince Fan-Férédin,” he said—calling me by name, which astonished me greatly—“what do I not owe you for the service you have just rendered me? You have woken me up, and in three days I shall possess the adorable Anemone. It’s necessary,” he added, “that I tell you my story, in order that you will understand all the obligation that I have to you.

  “My name is Prince Zazaraph. Nearly ten years ago, by the death of my father, whose unique heir I was, I became the great paladin of Dondindandia. I had the good fortune of making myself loved by the Dondindandians, my subjects, whom I governed more as a father than a sovereign, for it is true that every day of my reign was marked by some new benefit. They pressed me to marry some princess in order to fix the succession of my estates within my house.

  “I consented to that, but I wanted a perfect princess and I could not find one, although Dondindandian women are reputed elsewhere to be the most beautiful. One had beautiful eyes, beautiful eyebrows, a shapely nose, a complexion of lilies and roses, a lovely mouth and a charming smile, but one could be absolutely sure that her chin was a little too long. Another had everything capable of charming in her bearing, her figure and her facial features, and even had beautiful hands, but her fingers did not seem sufficiently rounded. Finally, another seemed to unite everything in her person, with all the aspects of beauty, all the most touching graces and everything the mind has of charms; I was so smitten with her that no one doubted that she would soon fix my choice; I believed so myself for some time and congratulated myself for having encountered a princess as amiable and so perfect. By the greatest good fortune in the world, however, I noticed one day that her ears weren’t small enough. It was necessary to detach myself from her.

  “Despairing of ever finding what I was seeking, I consulted a sage greatly renowned by the knowledge he had acquired by long study. ‘No,’ he told me, ‘don’t hope to find any perfect beauty in your estates or neighboring kingdoms; they are only seen in Romancia, and if anything in that land can make a choice difficult it’s that all the princesses there are so perfectly beautiful that one does not know which one to prefer; it’s your heart that will determine it. Depart, then, and bring back as soon as possible a princess worthy of you and your crown.’

  “As for the route that it was necessary to take to find Romancia, he assured me that there was none that was fixed and regulated, that it was sufficient to set forth, and by continuing to travel, everyone eventually arrived there, some by sea and others by land, and a few even via the moon and the stars.

  “I therefore undertook the journey, and after having traveled through many lands I finally arrived several years ago in it, without being able to say how; all that I have been able to learn since I have been living in the country is that one enters it, it is said, though the portal o
f amour, and leaves it by means of that of marriage. What completed my happiness, however, is that scarcely had I arrived when I encountered in Princess Anemone everything that can be imagined of beauty, charm, allure, attraction, perfection and much else.

  “After all the preliminaries that are absolutely necessary in this land, I had the good fortune to please her and to be loved by her. All that remained was the matter of uniting ourselves by the eternal bonds, but that ceremony requires preliminaries of infinite length here and I could not obtain a dispensation of any of them. It would take too long to tell you what they are, and once you have been here for a while you will know them well enough, because they all resemble one another.

  “Finally, I came to endure the final proof. It was written in the continuation of my adventures that a rival jealous of my happiness would find a means, with the help of an enchanter, to put me into a profound slumber, and that he would take advantage of it to abduct the beautiful Anemone; that I would continue to sleep for a year, only able to be woken up by Prince Fan-Férédin, to whom it was reserved to disenchant me; that three days after my awakening, the beautiful Anemone, delivered from her odious kidnapper, who would perish, would reappear to my eyes more beautiful and more lovable than ever, without having lost anything in such suspect hands of what might render her dear to me; that I would nevertheless have a few suspicions; that the suspicions would be followed by a quarrel, the quarrel by a clarification, and the clarification by a reconciliation, after which no obstacles would any longer oppose my happiness.

  “I am, therefore, sure of seeing my beautiful princess again in three days. We shall depart immediately for Dondindandia; and it is to you, Prince, that I have such great obligations.”

  I was extremely satisfied by Prince Zazaraph’s story, and to have found someone who could give me the instruction that I would inevitably need in an unknown country. After having testified to him how charmed I was to have had the opportunity to be of service to him, and explained to him how the desire to see beautiful things had brought me to Romancia, I let him glimpse the embarrassment I was in of finding someone who wanted to take the trouble to serve as my guide and enlighten me as to what I might not know about a land of which I had no other knowledge that that provided by books.

  “Can you believe,” he said, obligingly, “that, after the service you have just rendered me, I could leave that care to anyone other than me? No, no,” he added, embracing me with a tender expression by which I was touched, “I shall not quit you. In any case, have I anything better to do in the three days that I need to wait for the beautiful Anemone? Three days ought to be sufficient for you to know all of Romancia without going to the trouble of traveling it in its entirety, because one sees the same things everywhere.”

  I accepted such obliging offers without hesitation, and we conversed thus for some time in the forest. During that conversation, he had no difficulty perceiving that I did not know the language of the country, and I confessed to him ingenuously that in the conversations I had had with a few Romancians they had said many things that I had not understood.

  “That ought not to astonish you,” he told me, “for although all languages are spoken in Romancia—Arabic, Greek, Indian, Chinese and all modern languages—it is nevertheless true that there is a particular fashion of speaking them that one learns here. For instance, what would you call a person whom you loved and by whom you are loved? You would simply call her your mistress. Well, that word is not understood here. It is necessary to say the object I adore, the beauty whose irons I wear, the sovereign of my soul, the lady of my thoughts, the unique goal to which my desires tend, the divinity I serve, the light of my life, or the one for whom I live and breathe. There is, as you see, a lot of choice.”

  “That’s true,” I said, “but what must I do in order to learn that language, which I have never spoken?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “It’s a very limited language, and with the help of a little dictionary that I’ve made for my own usage I’ll have you talking a Romancian purer than Cyrus and Cleopatra.”18

  In fact, after we had sat down at the foot of a huge odorous cedar, Prince Zazaraph showed me a little book, neatly bound and as big as a pocket almanac, all written in his own hand, in which he claimed to have assembled all the phrases and words of the Romancian language, with the rules that it was necessary to observe in order to speak it well. He made me scan it attentively, and in less than no time I knew the entire language. I could reproduce the entire dictionary here, but I think it will suffice to report a few of the principal rules and the most remarkable phrases, just to give an idea of it, because it would be futile to try to speak Romancian here; for that, it is necessary to go to the land itself.

  Above all, there are two essential rules. The first is to express nothing simply, but always with exaggeration, imagery, metaphor or allegory. Following that rule, you must refrain carefully from saying “I love.” That signifies nothing. It is necessary to say “I burn with love,” or “A secret fire is devouring me,” or “I languish night and day,” or “A sweet languor is consuming me.” If a woman is beautiful, she “effaces everything that nature has of the most beautiful,” or “she is the masterpiece of the gods,” or “it is impossible to see her without loving her,” or “she is the goddess of beauty,” or “the mother of graces” or “she charms all eyes and enchains all hearts,” or “one might take her for Venus herself, and Amour would make that mistake.”

  The second rule consists of never saying a word without one or several epithets. It would be ridiculous for instance, to say amour, indifference, or regret; it is necessary to say tender and passionate amour, cold and tranquil indifference, and mortal and burning regret. Sighs are ardent, dolor bitter and profound, beauty ravishing, hope sweet, disdain proud and scorn insulting. The more epithets there are in a phrase, the more beautiful and truly Romancian it is.

  As for the words that compose the language, they are very few in number, and that is what facilitates Romancian intelligence. Here are almost all of the nouns: love, hate, transports, desires, sighs, alarms, hope, pleasures, pride, beauty, cruelty, ingratitude, perfidy, jealousy, dying, languishing, happiness, enjoyment, despair, heart, sentiments, charms, attractions, allures, enchantment, delight, dolor, regret, life death, felicity, disgrace, destiny, fortune, barbarity, cares, tenderness, tears, prayers, oaths, grass, verdure, night, day, streams, meadows, image, reverie and dreams.

  Those are almost all of the nouns in the Romancian language; it is only necessary to add, as I have said, various epithets such as sweet, tender, charming, admirable, delightful, horrible, furious, frightful, mortal, sensitive, dolorous, profound sharp, ardent, sincere, perfidious, fortunate or tranquil, and, above all, the expressions that are the most convenient of all: inexpressible, unimaginable, indescribable, beyond representation, surpassing all expression, beyond words and unthinkable.

  With that little collection one would be able to compile a folio volume in the Romancian language. There is, however, one observation to be made, and that it that it is necessary to try only to combine words with suitable epithets, because if someone for example, were to say “my dear and delightful sadness,”19 that would be a ridiculous and ill-assorted expression.

  VI. On High and Low Romancia

  The various reflections that we made on the Romancian language gave Prince Zazaraph the opportunity to inform me of an item of geography that I did not know, which is that there was a High and a Low Romancia.

  “Here,” he told me, “we are in High Romancia, and it is easy to distinguish from the Low on by virtue of all the marvels with which it is filled, and which you must have noticed in coming here; instead of which Low Romancia is similar to all the other countries of the world. For example, in Low Romancia a meadow is a meadow and a stream is only a steam, but in High Romancia a meadow is essentially covered in flowers, or at least with beautiful grass, and a stream never fails to roll silvery or crystal waters over little pebbles
, in order to make a soft murmur that lulls lovers to sleep or wakes up the birds. But perhaps you’ll easily learn to make that distinction.”

  “It’s true,” I said, “for everything I see and hear only excites my curiosity more.”

  “I can easily understand that,” he said, “and I even fear that you might be secretly holding it against me that I’ve delayed you for so long in this forest, where one sees nothing new, instead of taking you to some habitation. Let’s get up, then, and continue our conversation while walking.”

  He continued: “Once, Romancia was a very limited country, so only a few habitants were received there, all chosen from among the most celebrated princes and heroes. Everyone remembers the names and adventures of the first inhabitants of Romancia, including Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, Palmerin of Oliva, Palmerin of England, Primaleon of Greece, Perceforest, Amadis, Roland, Melusine and several others whose names I don’t recall. Nothing is as brilliant as their history. One saw them signaled by a thousand unusual exploits, pell-mell with genii, fays, enchanters, giants, endriagues, monsters, always fighting, never vanquished. Heaven and earth were interested in their success, continually lavishing the greatest miracles upon them, which made Romancia the most beautiful country in the world.

  “But such great splendor could not fail to attract many foreigners to the land, among others Pharamond, Cleopatra, Cassandra, Cyrus, Polexandre: great personalities, in truth, but who, not being, so to speak, our heroes like the former, and only by imitation, remained far below their models. However, as they had a truly extraordinary valor and virtue, they were given a place in High Romancia.