Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/25



the first of June, Henry de Kehlmark, the young "Dykgrave" or Count of the Dike, the lord of the castle Escal-Vigor, entertained a numerous company, as a sort of Joyous Entry, to celebrate his home-coming to the cradle of his forefathers, at Smaragdis, the largest and richest island in one of those enchanting and heroic northern seas, the coasts of which the bays and fiords hollow out and cut up capriciously into multiform archipelagoes and deltas.

Smaragdis, or the Emerald Isle, was a dependency of the half-German, half-Celtic kingdom of Kerlingalande. At the very beginning of commercial enterprise in the west, a colony of Hanseatic merchants settled there. The Kehlmarks claimed descent from the Danish sea-kings, or Vikings. Bankers, who had in them a dash of pirates' blood, men both of knowledge and action, I