“Perhaps he was saved also. When you get well enough to walk about, we shall look for him.”

I kissed her hand. “Why are you so good to me, Ulrica?”

“Should we not be good to those who suffer? Our Lord Jesus Christ commands us to love our neighbors.”

I was in a Christian home, and in a Christian country.

“Blessed be His name,” I piously added.

“I am so happy that you are a Christian, and not a Mohammedan,” Ulrica exclaimed. Her language was a mixture of the Barbarian language of the first Ulrica and Latin.

“And what is your name?” she asked.

“Cartaphilus.”

I inquired everywhere for Kotikokura. No one seemed to have seen another sailor who was saved on the day of the great storm. If I remained alive, could he drown? Were we not of the same blood? Was not my fate his? Was he perhaps at the bottom of the ocean, in constant agony, yet unable to die? Was he a prisoner of the monsters of the sea? If Kotikokura was not drowned, he was somewhere among men, and I was happy to think that I had given him enough precious stones to make him wealthy for centuries.

Ulrica and I were sitting on the verandah looking at the sea.

“Ulrica, who are you indeed?”

She looked at me, astonished.

“I am Ulrica.”

“Of course. But who is Ulrica?”

She looked at me again.

“No, no,—don’t be worried. I am very well. I must have given you much trouble.”

“No, Cartaphilus.”

“You are kinder to me than a mother.”

“Is not woman always the mother?”

“I have traveled all over the world, Ulrica, and have read the books of many nations, while you have been here your entire life watching the sea and helping people in distress. And yet, we have reached the same conclusion. Is it not strange?”

“Why should it be strange, Cartaphilus? What can one see in other lands…but the earth, the water, the sky…and men and women?”

“How true.”

“And is not God everywhere…and do not all people worship Jesus?”

“All people, Ulrica?”

“All except the Moors. But our King will convert them or kill them.”

“Who is our king, Ulrica?”

“Charles—the great Charles.”

“How do you know these things?”

“My husband, who was a sailor like yourself and had traveled everywhere, told me how Charles, after conquering all of Europe, was conquered himself by Jesus.”

“Your husband is dead, Ulrica?”

She nodded.

We remained silent for a while. The sea splashed the rock lazily, as if playing with it.

“The sea hides a man for years sometimes, and suddenly washes him back to his home. Your husband may return.”

She shook her head.

‘Just like the other—Ulrica,’ I thought. ‘Is this her reincarnation? Is she Asi-ma and Lydia too?’

“Did you love your husband much, Ulrica?”

She sighed, and claiming that she had to take care of the cooking, begged me to excuse her.

Did she love me?

“Ulrica, I shall tell you a story.”

“You tell such wonderful stories, Cartaphilus. They do not seem to be stories at all…but truth.”

I related my love for Asi-ma, and then for the other Ulrica. She wept. I caressed her hands.

“Ulrica died because of love…”

She nodded. “Always.”

Ulrica’s love and tenderness consoled me a little for the loss of Kotikokura. Meanwhile, I gathered information about the political and religious conditions of the country, and planned my new attack. I broached the matter of travel to Ulrica, but like the other Ulrica, she obstinately refused to leave her place of birth. I was becoming restless. ‘What does it matter, Cartaphilus?’ I asked myself again and again, ‘if you spend a quarter of a century in this spot, with Ulrica? Be compassionate, have mercy, be a man, not a god!’

The desire to leave beat against my brain as an impatient stallion paws the ground. Vaguely the thought of abandoning Ulrica shaped itself in my brain. One evening, as I was telling Ulrica a story, playing with her hair which she had unfolded upon my knees—someone knocked at the door. Ulrica asked who it was.

“Open, Ulrica,—it is I, your husband!”

She staggered to the door, like a person who has received a heavy blow on the head.

A man, tall, gaunt and unshaven, appeared on the threshold.

“Ulrica!” he exclaimed, but stopped short on seeing me.

“Who is that man?” he shouted.

Ulrica did not answer. She groped her way to the wall, and hid her face against it.

“So that’s it! Your husband fights the king’s wars while you are another man’s bedfellow.” “She thought you were dead, sir.” “What of that? A whore’s a whore—” “You misjudge, sir. She is faithful—” “Faithful?” He laughed, and turned Ulrica about, pulling her by the hair.

“Can you swear by Holy Writ that you are faithful to me?”

She remained silent, her head bent upon her chest.

He raised his fist. “Shameless bitch!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you!”

“Don’t touch her!” I remarked quietly.

“What? You! You! How dare you step between husband and wife? Yes…that is true…first I must kill you! Then I shall square my account with her.”

It was a novel situation. Should Cartaphilus, lord of a thousand women, suffer injury for the sake of one?

“Calm yourself, sir. I can explain my presence—”

“Cur!” he shouted, and drawing a knife from his belt, raised it, ready to strike me. Ulrica screamed, and trying to divert the blow, received it full in the chest. Without uttering one sound, she fell in a heap.

He bent over her, caressed her face a little, closed her eyes, arranged her hair. He motioned to me to help him. He held her head, and I her feet. His back turned toward me, he led the way to the rocks. We climbed the highest of them. We swung the body and threw it as far out as we could into the sea. A small jet of water splashed our feet.

I planted myself firmly on the rock, expecting a furious combat. Instead, however, he turned about quickly, descended the rock, and walked off. It was too dark to see the direction he took.

“Ulrica!” I called. “Ulrica!”

No answer! Only the echo of my voice striking the rock and mingling with the waves.

I seated myself on the rock, and meditated on my life. What was it, save a panorama of dreams and of graves? What could it ever be but more dreams and more graves?

It became chilly. I shivered, and rose with a start. I walked toward the house where Ulrica had nursed me to life, that she might forfeit her own. I looked in. It was empty and quiet, as if nothing had happened.

“Nothing matters, Cartaphilus,” someone seemed to whisper in my ear. “Everything flows.”

“Ulrica,” I muttered, “farewell.”

XL: CHARLEMAGNE HAS A PAIN IN HIS LEG—INCESTUOUS LOVE—I PREPARE TROUBLE

AACHEN fluttered with pride. Charlemagne had recently returned, crowned Emperor of the West by the grace of God, and possessor of the key to the grave of St. Peter. To show his gratitude to the Pope, he issued an order to behead all subjects who refused to accept baptism. He founded several schools of theology and paid large salaries to teachers of Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Charles had chosen Aachen because of its warm springs. In spite of his Herculean figure, he suffered from rheumatism. But the springs did not prove as miraculous as he had expected, and a new physician, I knew, would be welcome. Dressed as a monk, but wearing around my neck a large cross studded with precious stones to indicate opulence, I begged admission to the Great Monarch, claiming to be a doctor of medicine as well as a master of theology, conversant with all languages. The messenger, an officer of the Guard, whose large hand I filled with gold, bade me wait at the gate. A little later he reappeared.