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Show Acting Alone Page 4 Q8 at the well-patrolled and elegant Broadmoor Hotel, his own faction of hand-selected and -trained missionaries posted all around like a good, solid, mute wall of human flesh. Elder Cicerone would not emerge until he'd conquered his recent illness (nothing serious, a mere minor stroke), except for a few minutes on some morning in the near or not-so-near future (precisely which morning he had to leave to the memory of one or another of his underlings - part of the unfortunate effects of his slight bout with apoplexy), to celebrate the new joining of a certain young friend with his chosen bride. Weddings of any denomination, so long as they be in the Name of Christ, are the most felicitous occasions mortals are allowed to witness in this, the terrestrial, as opposed to telestial and celestial kingdoms, according to the Elder's own church; and he was simply constitutionally incapable of turning down a wedding invitation, even at some supposed, improbable, idly rumored peril to his life. Now, he had learned in this life - and, before reputedly forsaking him, good Councillor Ezra had reinforced the sentiment - that a man cannot function to his fullest capability without regularly making some gesture toward appeasing his conventional conscience. A man must bow his head on a regular basis and intimately speak with the little miniature godlet, or, if that be too pagan or pantheistic a conceit, the conscience inside of him, asking, How may I please thee? In what direction would it please thee that I turn my head? And it was quite strange in what direction the Elder's conscience had been directing his appeasing attentions these days. |
