“O Theotropia, my empress consort.”
“O Theodendron, my consort emperor.”
“How fair thou art, my hollow-cheeked beloved.”
“How fine art thou, blue-lipped spouse.”
“Thou art so wondrous frail beneath thy bell-like gown, the alarum of which, if but removed, would waken all my kingdom.”
“How excellently mortified thou art, my lord and master, to mine own shadow a twinned shade.”
“Oh how it pleaseth me to see my lady’s palms, like unto palm leaves verily, clasped to her mantle’s throat.”
“Wherewith, raised heavenward, I would pray thee mercy for our son, for he is not such as we, O Theodendron.”
“Heaven forfend, O Theotropia. Pray, what might he be, begotten and brought forth in godly dignity?”
“I will confess anon, and thou shalt hear me. Not a princeling but a sinner have I borne thee. Pink and shameless as a piglet, plump and merry, verily, all chubby wrists and ringlets came he rolling unto us.”
“He is roly-poly?”
“That he is.”
He is voracious?”
“Yea, in truth.”
“His skin is milk and roses?”
“As thou sayest.”
“What, pray, does our archimandrite say, a man of most penetrating gnosis? What say our consecrated eremites, most holy skeletesses? How should they strip the fiendish infant of his swaddling silks?
“Metamorphosis miraculous still lies within our Savior’s power. Yet thou, on spying the babe’s unsightliness, shalt not cry out and rouse the sleeping demon from his rest?
“I am thy twin in horror. Lead on, Theotropia.”
|