fra balthasar rubbed his colours in the chapel of castle avalon, and stared complacently upon the frescoes his fingers had called into being.

a migratory friar, fra balthasar had come from the rich skies, the purple vineyards, the glimmering orange groves of the far south. gossip hinted that a certain romantic indiscretion had driven him northwards over the sea. a "bend sinister" ran athwart his reputation as a priest. men muttered that he was an infidel, a blasphemous vagabond, versed in all the damnable heresies of antiquity. be that as it may, fra balthasar had come to gilderoy on a white mule, with two servants at his back, an apt tongue to serve him, and much craft as a painter and goldsmith. he had set up a bottega at gilderoy, and had cozened the patronage of the magnates and the merchants. moreover, he had netted the favour of the lord flavian of avalon, and was blazoning his chapel for him with the lavish fancy of a florentine.

fra balthasar stood in a cataract of sunlight, that poured in through a painted window in the west. he wore the white habit of dominic and the long black mantle. a golden mist played about his figure as he rubbed his palette, and scanned with the egotism of the artist the pietà painted above the lord flavian's state stall. that gentleman, in the flesh, had established himself on a velvet hassock before the altar steps, thus flattering the friar in the part of a sympathetic patron. the lord of avalon had dedicated his own person to art as an eastern king in the splendour of gothic arms, kneeling bare-headed before the infant christ.

fra balthasar was a plump man and a comely, black of eye and full of lip. his shaven chin shone blue as sleek velvet. he had turned from the pietà towards the altar, where a triptych gleamed with massed and brilliant colour. the virgin, a palpitating divinity breathing stars and gems from her full bosom, gazed with a face of sensuous serenity at the infant lying in her lap. she seemed to exhale an atmosphere of gold. on either wing, angels, transcendant girls in green and silver, purple and azure, scarlet and white, made the soul swim with visions of ruddy lips and milk-white hands. their wings gleamed like opals. they looked too frail for angels, too human for heaven.

the lord of avalon sat on his scarlet hassock, and stared at the madonna with some measure of awe. she was no attenuated, angular, green-faced fragment of saintliness, but by every curve a woman, from plump finger to coral lip.

"you are no byzantine," quoth the man on the hassock, with something of a sigh.

the priest glanced at him and smiled. there were curves in lip and nostril that were more than indicative of a sleek and sensuous worldliness. fra balthasar was much of an antinous, and doted on the conviction.

"i paint women, messire," he said.

his lordship laughed.

"divinities?"

balthasar flourished his brush.

"divine creatures, golden flowers of the world. give me the rose to crush against my mouth, violets to burn upon my bosom. truth, sire, consider the sparkling roundness of a woman's arm. consider her wine-red lips, her sinful eyes, her lily fingers dropping spikenard into the soul. i confess, sire, that i am a man."

the friar's opulent extravagance of sentiment suited the litheness of his look. balthasar had enthroned himself in his own imagination as a species of apollo, a golden-tongued seer, whose soul soared into the glittering infinitudes of art. an immense egotist, he posed as a full-blooded divinity, palpitating to colour and to sound. he had as many moods as a vain woman, and was a mere fire-fly in the matter of honour.

"reverend sire," quoth the man on the footstool with some tightening of the upper lip, "you bulk too big for your frock, methinks."

balthasar touched a panel with his brush; cast a glance over his shoulder, with a cynical lifting of the nostril.

"my frock serves me, sire, as well as a coat of mail."

"and you believe the things you paint?"

the man swept a vermilion streak from his brush.

"an ingenuous question, messire."

"i am ever ingenuous."

"a perilous habit."

"yet you have not answered me."

the friar tilted his chin like a woman eyeing herself in a mirror.

"religion is full of picturesque incidents," he said.

"and is profitable."

"sire, you shame solomon. there are ever many rich and devout fools in the world. give me a gleaming venus, rising ruddy from the sea, rather than a lachrymose magdalene. but what would you? i trim my venus up in fine apparel, put a puling infant in her lap. ecce--sancta maria."

the man on the footstool smiled despite the jester's theme, a smile that had more scorn in it than sympathy.

"you verge on blasphemy," he said.

"there can be no blasphemy where there is no belief."

"you are over subtle, my friend."

"nay, sire, i have come by that godliness of mind when man discovers his own godhead. let your soul soar, i say, let it beat its wings into the blue of life. hence with superstition. shall i subordinate my mind to the prosings of a mad charlatan such as saul of tarsus? shall i, like each rat in this mortal drain, believe that some god cares when i have gout in my toe, or when i am tempted to bow to venus?"

the man on the hassock grimaced, and eyed the friar much as though he had stumbled on some being from the underworld. he was a mystic for all his manhood.

"god pity your creed," he said.

"god, the inflated mortal----"

"enough."

"this man god of yours who tosses the stars like so many lemons."

"enough, sir friar."

"defend me from your mass of metaphor, your relics of barbarism. we, the wise ones, have our own hierarchy, our own olympus."

"on my soul, you are welcome to it," quoth the man by the altar.

balthasar's hand worked viciously; he was strenuous towards his own beliefs, after the fashion of dreamers delirious with egotism. the very splendour of his infidelity took its birth from the fact that it was largely of his own creating. his pert iconoclasm pandered to his own vast self-esteem.

"tell me for what you live," said the man by the altar.

"for beauty."

"and the senses?"

"colours, odours, sounds. to breathe, to burn, and to enjoy. to be a greek and a god."

"and life?"

"is a great fresco, a pageant of passions."

the lord of avalon sprang up and began to pace the aisle with the air of a man whose blood is fevered. for all his devoutness and his mystical fidelity, he was in too human and passionate a mood to be invulnerable to balthasar's sensuous shafts of fire. the lord flavian had come by a transcendental star-soaring spirit, an inspiration that had torched the wild beacon of romance. he was red for a riot of chivalry, a passage of desire.

turning back towards the altar, he faced the madonna with her choir of angel girls. fra balthasar was watching him with a feline sleekness of visage, and a smile that boasted something of contempt. the friar considered spirituality a species of magician's lanthorn for the cozening of fools.

"what quip have you for love?" said the younger man, halting by the altar rails.

balthasar stood with poised brush.

"there is some sincerity in the emotion," he said.

"you are experienced?"

"sire, consider my 'habit.'"

the friar's mock horror was surprising, an excellent jest that fell like a blunted bolt from the steel of a vigorous manhood. the lord flavian ran on.

"shall i fence with an infidel?" he asked.

"sire, a man may be a man without the creed of athanasius."

"how much of me do you understand?"

fra balthasar cleared his throat.

"the lady duessa, sire, is a rose of joy."

"monk!"

"my lord, it was your dictum that you are ever ingenuous. i echo you."

"need i confess to you on such a subject?"

"nay, sire, you have the inconsistency of a poet."

"how so?"

"well, well, one can sniff rotten apples without opening the door of the cupboard."

the younger man jerked away, and went striding betwixt the array of frescoes with something of the wild vigour of a blind polyphemus. balthasar, subtle sophist, watched him from the angle of his eye with the sardonic superiority of one well versed in the contradictions of the world. he had scribbled a shrewd sketch of the passions stirring in his patron's heart. had he not heard from the man's own lips of the white-faced elf of the pine woods and her vengeance? and the lady duessa! fra balthasar was as wise in the gossip of gilderoy as any woman.

"sire," he said, as the aristocrat turned in his stride, "i ask of you a bold favour."

"speak out."

"suffer me to paint your mood in words."

the man stared, shrugged his shoulders, smiled enigmatically.

"try your craft," he said.

balthasar began splashing in a foreground with irritable bravado.

"my lord, you were a fool at twenty," were his words.

"a thrice damned fool," came the echo.

balthasar chuckled.

"and now, messire, a golden chain makes a tantalus of you. life crawls like a sluggish river. you chafe, you strain, you rebel, feed on your own heart, sin to assert your liberty. youth slips from you; the sky narrows about your ears. well, well, have i not read aright?"

"speak on," quoth the man by the altar.

"ah, sire, it is the old tale. they have cramped up your youth with book and ring; shut you up in a moral sarcophagus with a woman they call your wife. you burn for liberty, and the unknown that shines like a purple streak in a fading west. ah, sire, you look for that one marvellous being, who shall torch again the youth in your heart, make your blood burn, your soul to sing. that one woman in the world, mysterious as the moon, subtle as the night, ineffably strange as a flaming dawn. that woman who shall lift you to the stars; whose lips suck the sap of the world; whose bosom breathes to the eternal swoon of all sweet sounds. she shall light the lust of battle in your heart. for her your sword shall leap, your towers totter. chivalry should lead you like a pillar of fire out of the night, a heroic god striving for a goddess."

the lord of avalon stood before the high altar as one transfigured. youth leapt in him, red, glorious, and triumphant. balthasar's tongue had set the pyre aburning.

"by god, it is the truth," he said.

the friar gathered his brushes, and took breath.

"hast thou found thy beatrice, o my son?"

"have i gazed into heaven?"

balthasar's voice filled the chapel.

"live, sire, live!" he said.

"ah!"

"be mad! drink star wine, and snuff the odours of all the sunsets! live, live! you can repent in comfort when you are sixty and measure fifty inches round the waist."