"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

"I don't recollect such a conversation." "No?"
"I have never been so insulted in my life!" "But I am the King," said Arthur. "You can't sit down in front
of the King." "Rubbish!"
Arthur began to laugh more than was seemly, and his foster-brother, Sir Kay, and his old guardian, Sir
Ector, came out from behind the throne, where they had been hiding. Kay took off Merlyn's hat and put
it on Sir Ector, and Sir Ector said, "Well, bless my soul, now I am a nigromancer. Hocus-Pocus." Then
everybody began laughing, including Merlyn eventually, and seats were sent for so that they could sit
down, and bottles of wine were opened so that it should not be a dry meeting.
"You see," he said proudly, "I have summoned a council."
There was a pause, for it was the first time that Arthur had made a speech, and he wanted to collect his
wits for it. "Well," said the King. "It is about chivalry. I want to ialk about that."
Merlyn was immediately watching him with a sharp eye. His knobbed fingers fluttered among the stars
and secret signs of his gown, but he would not help the speaker. You might say that this moment was the
critical one in his careerтАФthe moment towards which he had been living backward for heaven knows
how many centuries, and now he was to see for certain whether he had lived in vain.
"I have been thinking," said Arthur, "about Might and Right. I don't think things ought to be done
because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them. After all, a
penny is a penny in any case, however much Might is exerted on either side, to prove that it is or is not.
Is that plain?" Nobody answered.
"Well, I was talking to Merlyn on the battlements one day, and he mentioned that the last battle we hadтАФ
in which seven hundred kerns were killedтАФwas not so much fun as I had thought it was. Of course,
battles are not fun when you come to think about them. I mean, people ought not to be killed, ought
they? It is better to be alive. "Very well. But the funny thing is that Merlyn was helping me to win
battles. He is still helping me, for that matter, and we hope to win the battle of Bedegraine together,
when it comes off."
"We will," said Sir Ector, who was in the secret.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Secundus.html (29 of 89)14-10-2007 15:44:53
 file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Incipit%20Liber%20Secundus.html



"That seems to me to be inconsistent. Why does he help me to fight wars, if they are bad things?"
There was no answer from anybody, and the King began to speak with agitation.
"I could only think," said he, beginning to blush, "I could only think that IтАФthat weтАФthat heтАФthat he
wanted me to win them for a reason."
He paused and looked at Merlyn, who turned his head away.
"The reason wasтАФwas it?тАФthe reason was that if I could be the master of my kingdom by winning
these two battles, I could stop them afterwards and then do something about the business of Might. Have
I guessed? Was I right?"
The magician did not turn his head, and his hands lay still in his lap.
"I was!" exclaimed Arthur.
And he began talking so quickly that he could hardly keep up with himself.
"You see," he said, "Might is not Right. But there is a lot of Might knocking about in this world, and
something has to be done about it. It is as if People were half horrible and half nice. Perhaps they are
even more than half horrible, and when they are left to thelmselves they run wild. You get the average
baron that we see nowadays, people like Sir Bruce Sans Piti├й", who simply go clod-hopping round the
country dressed in steel, and doing exactly what they please, for sport. It is our Norman idea about the
upper classes having a monopoly of power, without reference to justice. Then the horrible side gets
uppermost, and there is thieving and rape and plunder and torture. The people become beasts.