Volume 16 — Odd Stories: III. Peter The Powerful.

Long and loud was the flourish of trumpets that greeted the day on which Philip the Mighty was born to his father's dukedom; so rare was the promise of a babe. Need it be said that, nurtured under the eye of his stern sire, he grew in the strength of justice? To such a degree had he inherited the zeal of his ancestors, that while yet in his cradle he strangled a wretched nurse for stealing his spoon; whereat there was another flourish of trumpets. Subsequent reflections upon the loss of so useful a servant taught him to restrain the exercise of his just powers; and hence, when his tutors failed to instruct him within a given time in the arts, sciences, languages, and literatures, he merely broke their heads. We live to learn; and so it proved even to a prince as well endowed as Philip the Mighty. In these early acts we can see the foundations of that character which was afterwards so great a monument among men.

During the famous period in which our prince served his sire in the administration of justice, the dungeons were never empty of thieves and wranglers, nor the axe long idle for want of miscreant heads. To a peasant who once stole an apple, he said, “How now, varlet, dost confess?” Answered the trembling churl: “Nay, most puissant lord, I stole not the fruit.” Then spoke Philip: [pg 139] “By my halidom, I'll mend thine honesty”; whereupon the fellow was put on the rack till he broke a blood-vessel, still not confessing, for it was death to steal an apple out of the duke's garden. At night the peasant died in his bed of a hemorrhage, piously acknowledging in his last moments that he had committed the theft; whereat was another flourish of trumpets. Life is a great lesson, however, and it must not be supposed that our powerful hero could content himself with a few exploits at court when he felt that he had a mission to reform the world.

Therefore it was that Philip the Mighty set out upon a knight's errand to slay all the witches, devils, malefactors, giants, goblins, and monsters that came in his path. But one squire rode with him, bearing a golden trumpet, which, when Peter had done to death a sour-faced hag who shrieked at him on the mountain-side, he blew right merrily. Now, the old witch had asked the valiant knight for justice against her lord at court. Life is a science not to be mastered without blows; and Philip learned to slay and fear not in such stout earnest that soon he won the renown of being, as in fact he was called, the Champion Wrong-killer of the age.

When a foul, black-hearted necromancer was tracked to his hiding-place, what else should our good knight do but put him to the sword? When a five-eyed dwarf was accused of deviltry, who else should carve him for the crows but our duke's son? When a grim ogre, breathing death and fury, beset him whose arm was so mighty, when malefactors pestered the land, when monsters of all kind raged on every hand, who dealt them such lightning doom as the champion wrong-killer? On every occasion did his trusty squire blow the trumpet of gold right lustily, to the wonder of lords and people. Now, it was whispered that the slain sorcerers had helped husbandmen and artisans with their strange inventions; that the malefactors were slaughtered outright for the crimes of their fellows; that the giants were amiable men, sometimes, but provoked beyond endurance; that dwarfs and witches were poor old people, seldom as bad as they seemed to be. Nevertheless, the real monsters of the land increased day by day, in spite of the champion killer's sword and his squire's golden trumpet.

Weary with much slaughter of false knights and caitiff wretches and monsters, the paladin Philip resolved to undertake the deliverance of the poor from the oppressions of the rich. Filled with this noble idea, he slew a yeoman who was chastising his servant without mercy. Seeing a number of slaves at work, he set them all free by killing their master. He divided the estates of the rich among the poor. He distributed largesses among multitudes of the needy. He rescued honest damsels who were being carried away by villain lords. Alas! for an ingrate world. 'Twas rumored that the yeoman had left a widow and seven children to mourn him. The slaves became marauders; the poor quarrelled among themselves; the beggars got drunk; and some of the honest damsels lamented their fallen lords. Howbeit, the faithful squire blew his trumpet louder than ever.

Meanwhile had our good knight grown religious, and burned men at the stake; but the more the fuel, the greater the flame. The more lances he shattered for honor's sake, the more swords he blunted for justice's sake; the more money he spent to give feasts to beggars, and the more [pg 140] land he parcelled among the poor, all the more honor, justice, bounty, estate, remained to be won and adjusted. His sharp judgments had, after all, won him nothing but the sound of his trumpet. He had killed the innocent and robbed the poor, when he intended to do otherwise, and, if he executed Heaven's judgments, it was by a kind of mistake. One thing he had not slain—himself.

All the while, he who had killed so many monsters was growing in bulk and stature out of all proportion. As his legs and arms increased their strength of muscle, his ears grew longer, and his eyes grew blinder. He scorned, nay, devoured the weak he once defended, and, at last, a monster himself, was killed by a conspiracy of those whose champion he once was. For Philip, though a champion wrong-killer, was blind to his own wrong-doing; and, though a reformer, never allowed people to reform themselves; so he destroyed the wheat with the chaff and killed the good with the bad.