Tuesday 23 June 2020

Gerard, Demons And Coffee

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTERs SEVEN-EIGHT.

In the Faerie castle, Hugi remarks:

"'Here's a tricksy bigging.'" (p. 47)

Alfric recites three lines of a chanson about one of the Emperor Napoleon's heroes:

"'Gerard li vaillant, brigadier magnes,
"'tres ans tut pleins ad este an Espagne
"'combattant contre le Grande-Bretagne.'" (p. 47)

"Gerard the valiant, great brigadier,
"three full years he was in Spain
"fighting Great Britain."

Hugi reports:

"'Great flashes o' lightning from the topmost tower, a demon figure departing in smoke, and the stench o' warlockry so rank it night curdled ma banes.'" (p. 48)

For the fourth time, I quote a particular line from James Blish for comparison:

"The room stank of demons."
-see here.

For breakfast at Mother Gerd's, Holger consumes porridge, bread, cheese, ale and bacon and thinks:

"...wistfully of coffee and a smoke." (p. 24)

He shares such thoughts with time travelers. See here.

However, at Alfric's castle, he is served:

ham and eggs;
toast;
buckwheat cakes;
coffee;
orange juice. (p. 48)

He thinks that they must have learned his tastes by witchcraft and we have already been told that they can conjure "...things from the air-..." (p. 45)

7 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Alas, I've read only Doyle's THE LOST WORLD, of his non Holmesian stories. And I know Sir Arthur preferred his other stories to the ones he wrote about the Great Detective.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Sheila helped me to translate the archaic French about Brigadier Gerard and then remarked, "You forget that Conan Doyle wrote anything but Sherlock Holmes!"

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And Doyle came to be very frustrated by people only caring about his Sherlock Holmes stories!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

His historicals are very good -- SIR NIGEL, THE WHITE COMPANY, and MICHA CLARKE. I enjoyed them thoroughly; in one of my series they're fact, and Donan Coyle wrote other (but similar) books, as a homage, and some of the characters are descendants of Sir Nigel and Sam Aylward.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And I most certainly do recognize Sir Nigel Loring and Sam Aylward! And I'm pretty sure Poul Anderson also read the historical fictions of Conan Doyle.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Yes, Poul did read them, and liked them.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I will look for them the next time I go to Barnes and Noble!

Ad astra! Sean