And yet, it could not be considered an unhappy age. Despite difficulties, the population soared to new heights every year, and men aspired to fresh extremes of audacity. If life was uncertain, it was at least interesting. Machinery had not bred individual initiative out of the race as yet. And though there were shocking class differences and feudal privilege reigned supreme, checked only by the dubious power of the king and the baleful presence of the clergy, still it could fairly be called a democratic age and a time of individual opportunity.

But neither Marvin nor Sir Gules were thinking of these things as they approached a narrow old house with drawn shutters and a brace of horses posted near the door. They were not contemplating individual enterprise, though indeed they were engaged in it; nor did they consider death, though it surrounded them constantly. Theirs was not a self-conscious age.

'Well then,' Sir Gules said, leading his guest down the carpeted floor past the silent manservants to a high wainscotted room in which a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the great onyx fireplace.

Marvin did not answer. His eye was taking in the details of the room. The carven armoire was surely tenth century, and the portrait on the west wall, half-hidden by its gilt frame, was a genuine Moussault.

'Come, sit, I pray thee,' said Sir Gules, sinking gracefully to a David Ogilvy half-couch decorated in the Afghan brocade so popular that year.

'Thank you,' Marvin said, sitting upon an eight-legged John IV with rosewood handles and a backing of heart-o'-palm.

'A little wine?' Sir Gules said, handling with casual reverence the bronze decanter with gold chasings engraved by Dagobert of Hoyys.

'Not just at the moment, give thee thanks,' Marvin replied, brushing a fleck of dust from his stuff-coloured outercoat of green baptiste with lisle froggings, made to his measure by Geoffrey of Palping Lane.

'Then mayhap a touch of snuff?' Sir Gules inquired, profferring his small platinum snuffbox made by Durr of Snedum, upon which was portrayed in steel-point a hunting scene from the Orange Forest of Lesh.

'Perhaps later,' Marvin said, squinting down at the double-furled silver thread laces on his dancing pumps,

'My purpose in bringing you here,' his host said abruptly, 'was to inquire as to the availability of your aid to a cause both good and righteous, and with which you are not, I believe, entirely unacquainted. I refer to the Sieur Lamprey Height d'Augustin, better known as The Enlightened.'

'D'Augustin!' Marvin exclaimed. 'Why, I knew him when I was little more than a lad, in '02 or '03, the year of the Speckled Plague! Why, he used to visit at our chalet! I can still remember the marzipan apples he used to bring me!'

'I thought you would remember him,' Gules said quietly. 'All of us do.'

'And how is that great and good gentleman?'

'Well enough – we hope.'

Marvin was instantjy alert. 'Your meaning, sir?'

'Last year, d'Augustin was working on his country estate at Duvannemor, which is just beyond Moueur d'Alençon in the foothills of the Sangrela.'

'I know the place,' Marvin said.

'He was finishing his masterwork, The Ethics of Indecision, with which he has travailled himself these past twenty years. When suddenly, a host of armed men burst into the Rune Study where he was working, having overpowered his servants and bribed his personal bodyguard. No one else was present save his daughter, who was helpless to interfere. These nameless men seized and bound d'Augustin, burned all extant copies of his book, and took him away.'

'Infamous!' cried Marvin.

'His daughter, witnessing so horrid a sight, swooned away into a lassitude so complete that it resembled death; and thus, through an inadvertent counterfeit, she was spared from death itself.'

'Shocking!' muttered Marvin. 'But who would let slip violence upon a harmless scribbler whom many call the outstanding philosopher of our day and age?'

'Harmless, say thee?' Sir Gules inquired, his lips quirking into a painful grimace. 'Are you then acquainted with d'Augustin's work that you say so?'

'I have had not the privilege of acquaintance,' Marvin said. 'My life, in truth, has availed me little opportunity for such matters, since I have been travelling continually for some such time now. But I thought that the writings of so gentle and esteemed a man would surely-'

'I beg to differ,' Sir Gules said. 'This fine and upright old man whom we are discussing has been led, by an irreversible process of Logical Inductiveness, to put forth certain doctrines which, if they were popularly known, might well cause bloody revolution.'

'That scarce seems a goodly matter,' Marvin replied coldy. 'Wouldst teach me damnable sedition?'

'Nay, softly, softly! These doctrines which d'Augustin proclaims are not so shocking in themselves, but rather, in their consequences. That is to say, they take on the timbre of Moral Facticity, and are no more truly seditious than is the monthly wax and wane of th' moon.'

'Well … give me an example,' Marvin said.

'D'Augustin proclaims that men are born free,' Gules said softly.

Marvin thought about that. 'A new-fangled notion,' he declared at last, 'but not without its suasion. Tell me more.'

'He declares that upright conduct is meritorious and pleasing in the eyes of God.'

'A strange way of looking at things,' Marvin decided. 'And yet – hmmm.'

'He also holds that unexamined life is not worth living.'

'Quite a radical point of view,' Marvin said. 'And it is, of course, obvious what would happen were these statements to fall into the hands of the populace at large. The authority of king and church would inevitably be undermined … and yet – and yet-'

'Yes?' Gules prompted softly.

'And yet,' Marvin said, gazing dreamily at the terracotta ceiling with its inscriblature of interlocked palladiums, 'and yet might not a new order arise out of the chaos which would unerringly ensue? Might not a new world be born in which the overweening humours of the nobility would be checked and ameliorated by the concept of personal worth, and in which the thundering threats of a church gone base and political would be countered by a new relationship between a man and his God unmediated by fat priest or larcenous friar?'

'Do you really think that is possible?' Gules asked, in a voice like silk sliding over velvet.

'Yes,' Marvin said. 'Yes, by the hangnails of God, I so do believe! And I will aid you in rescuing d'Augustin and in disseminating this strange and revolutionary new doctrine!'

'Thank you,' Gules said simply. And he made a gesture with his hand,

A figure glided out from behind Marvin's chair. It was the hunchback. Marvin caught the deadly wink of steel as the creature sheathed his knife.

'No insult intended,' Gules said earnestly. 'We were sure of you, of course. But had you found our plan repugnant, it would have been incumbent upon us to hide our poor judgement in an unmarked grave.'

'The precaution lends point to your story,' Marvin said dryly. 'But me likes it not such keen appreciation.'

'Such confabulation is our common lot in life,' the hunchback quoth. 'And indeed, did not the Greeks consider it better to die in the hands of friends than to languish in the claws of enemies? Our roles are chosen for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life's stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.'

'Sir,' said Marvin, 'you sound to me a man who has experienced some casting problems himself.'

'One well might say so,' the hunchback replied dryly. 'I would not of myself have selected this lowly part, had not exigencies beyond prediction forced me to it.'

So saying, the hunchback reached down and unstrapped his legs, which had been bound to his thighs, and thereby rose to his full height of six feet one. He unfastened the hump from his back, wiped greasepaint and drool from his face, combed his hair, detached his beard and his club foot, then turned to Marvin with a wry smile upon his face.