"
"Now, to be sure, you are a queer cool candid fellow, you young Manuel,
who will go far, whether for good or evil!"
"I do not know about good or evil. But I am Manuel, and I shall follow
after my own thinking and my own desires."
"And certainly it is no less queer you should be saying that: for, as
everybody knows, that used to be the favorite byword of your namesake
the famous Count Manuel who is so newly dead in Poictesme yonder."
At that the young swineherd nodded, gravely. "I must accept the omen,
sir. For, as I interpret it, my great namesake has courteously made way
for me, in order that I may go far beyond him."
Then Manuel cried farewell and thanks to the mild-mannered, snub-nosed
stranger, and Manuel left the miller's pigs to their own devices by the
pool of Haranton, and Manuel marched away in his rags to meet a fate
that was long talked about.
[Illustration]
II
Niafer
The first thing of all that Manuel did, was to fill a knapsack with
simple and nutritious food, and then he went to the gray mountain called
Vraidex, upon the remote and cloud-wrapped summit of which dread Miramon
Lluagor dwelt, in a doubtful palace wherein the lord of the nine sleeps
contrived illusions and designed the dreams of men.
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