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Updated: June 15, 2025
Anyway, they all agreed, it was vastly preferable to being thrown down into an evil smelling bear-pit and being clawed and mauled to death by imperfectly carnivorous animals. "It so happened, however, that the keeper of the royal hives had leanings towards Christianity himself, and moreover, like most of the Court officials, he was very much attached to Vespaluus.
Vespaluus was carried into the open space in front of the hives, blushing and slightly embarrassed, but not at all displeased at the attention which was being centred on him." "He seems to have resembled you in more things than in appearance," said the Baroness. "Don't interrupt at a critical point in the story," said Clovis.
"'I'll cut off your head first, with any axe that comes handy, said Vespaluus indignantly; 'do you suppose that I'm going to begin my reign by mortally affronting the sacred serpents? It would be most unlucky. "'But your Majesty's Christian principles? exclaimed the bewildered Chamberlain. "'I never had any, said Vespaluus; 'I used to pretend to be a Christian convert just to annoy Hkrikros.
There was a certain king called Hkrikros, who had a fearful temper and no immediate successor in his own family; his married sister, however, had provided him with a large stock of nephews from which to select his heir. And the most eligible and royally-approved of all these nephews was the sixteen-year-old Vespaluus.
"One just true enough to be interesting and not true enough to be tiresome," said the Baroness. Clovis rearranged several cushions to his personal solace and satisfaction; he knew that the Baroness liked her guests to be comfortable, and he thought it right to respect her wishes in that particular. "Have I ever told you the story of Saint Vespaluus?" he asked.
"The king had Vespaluus shut up in a dark tower for three days, with nothing but bread and water to live on, the squealing and fluttering of bats to listen to, and drifting clouds to watch through one little window slit. The anti-Pagan section of the community began to talk portentously of the boy-martyr.
The Librarian lingered for many days in fact, for all I know, he may have ultimately recovered, but Hkrikros died that same evening. Vespaluus had hardly finished getting the honey stains off his body before a hurried deputation came to put the coronation oil on his head.
Then, however, came the great culminating feature of the summer festival, the ceremonial dance round the grove of the sacred serpents, and Vespaluus, as we should say, 'sat it out. The affront to the State religion was too public and ostentatious to be overlooked, even if the king had been so minded, and he was not in the least so minded.
If it had been any of the other nephews the king would possibly have ordered something drastic in the way of scourging and banishment, but in the case of the favoured Vespaluus he determined to look on the whole thing much as a modern father might regard the announced intention of his son to adopt the stage as a profession. He sent accordingly for the Royal Librarian.
There is some talk of making you the patron saint of beehives, and a certain shade of honey-yellow has been christened Vespaluusian gold at the Emperor's Court. You can't surely go back on all this. "'I don't mind being reverenced and greeted and honoured, said Vespaluus; 'I don't even mind being sainted in moderation, as long as I'm not expected to be saintly as well.
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